"Pathetic, ridiculous and wholly inadequate" were just some of the words to describe Alsager Town Council's reaction to rail services being suspended in the town as they call on the train operator to reverse their decision.

East Midlands Railway (EMR) decided to suspend almost all its services for passengers at Alsager from 7th September.

Only the first and last train of the day in each direction on the Crewe – Derby service will stop at Alsager until the backend of December.

At Tuesday's Alsager Town Council meeting, Cllr Michael Unett's motion to lobby East Midlands Trains to reverse their decision to remove hourly trains stopping at Alsager from Monday to Saturday was unanimously supported.

Cllr Unett told the meeting that East Midlands Railway had taken this decision to "save time" by missing out Alsager on their routes.

Speaking at Tuesday's meeting, Cllr Unett said: "The problem with this is it cuts our hourly services in half, they are running more services on a Sunday then they are the rest of the week.

"This is wholly inadequate and even though it may be temporary it is still heading massively in the wrong direction, especially as people are starting to return to work, school, college and university.

"This is going to have a massive impact and Alsager already has very poor travel links and this is only going to make the situation worse especially since we are a growing town."

At the time of publication, a public petition, which has been lodged asking for the hourly EMR services at Alsager Train Station to be restored had 1,352 signatures.

Cllr Ron Tyson said: "I think it is pathetic the amount of time that is going to be saved by East Midlands Trains by letting them run straight through Alsager."

Cllr Sue Helliwell added to the motion a request to reinstate the early morning train from Alsager to Crewe, due to residents who work in Crewe being unable to get there for 8am.

As well as working with Cheshire East Council on the matter, Cllr Rod Fletcher, chair of Alsager Town Council, has been working alongside Stoke-on-Trent council and the North Staffs Community Rail Partnership.

Also, at a recent meeting of the Public transport Consortium, Cllr Fletcher persuaded Stoke-on-Trent council and the North Staffs Community Rail Partnership to write to Grant Shapps, Secretary of State for Transport, to ask for Alsager's services to be reinstated.

Cllr Fletcher added: "We hope that someone will listen because it is ridiculous."

Alsager Town Council supported Cllr Unett's motion and agreed to send a copy of the letter to Congleton MP Fiona Bruce and Grant Shapps.

MP Fiona Bruce has spoken in Parliament about the issue, as she asked for a Parliamentary debate on the need to maintain local train services.