A ROW has broken out over the frequency of trains serving Bentley station. A number of villagers, backed up by Ashley Mote, a MEP for South East England, are calling for South West Trains to increase the number of trains that stop at the station. They say that the lack of trains is forcing them to travel up to six miles by road to Alton or Farnham to join the service to London Waterloo. But Chris Campbell, chairman of Alton Line Users' Association, hit out at the suggestion that more trains should be stopping at the station. He said that there was already an "ample" service. Mr Mote, of Binsted, told The Herald: "Since my election to the European Parliament last year, a number of local residents who use Bentley railway station have complained to me that the failure of many trains to stop at the station is a cause of aggravation and unnecessary expense to themselves. "They rightly point out that such a stop could not possibly cause timetable problems since the station is the penultimate one on a line used twice an hour in each direction outside the rush hour. "South West Trains claim such a stop would add three minutes to the journey to and from Alton. But passengers wanting to catch a train not stopping at Bentley have a four or six mile journey to Farnham or Alton. Weren't trains supposed to take cars off the road, and help reduce congestion, pollution and parking problems?" The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) MP fired off a letter to South West Trains urging them to rethink the timetable. And although the firm questioned the level of demand, it did concede to review the situation if it could be proven that there was a "significant" level of demand for additional services. With this in mind, Mr Mote has now produced a postcard inviting train users to indicate when they would prefer to have trains stopping at the station. He has distributed the cards to homes in the Bentley area and dropped them off at Bentley Stores and The Star Inn for customers to fill- in. After around four weeks, he will compile the comments he has received and present them to South West Trains. "Years ago there was a funny, old-fashioned idea that passengers - now called customers - came first," Mr Mote said. "In any case, all the other stations at this end of the line have a half-hour service, so why not Bentley? Why should it matter whether one person got on or off or a hundred?" Mr Campbell said: "We (the Alton Line Users' Association) would not in any way support more trains stopping at Bentley, with a single track like we have got. They have got ample service there at the moment. Even our own committee members who live in Bentley agree with us. "What Mr Mote wants to do is what the line users are trying to do at the moment and that is to press South West Trains to take out stops at Brookwood. They are stopping four trains an hour for non-existent passengers at the moment." James Arbuthnot, MP for North East Hampshire, said: "Certainly it would be more convenient for Bentley station users, including me, if all the trains stopped at Bentley instead of only half of them. "But we need to remember that it might be less convenient for the larger numbers who are Alton station users, particularly if it threw out the whole of the Alton line timetable - as it might, because of the several minutes that would need to be added to the journey times of the stopping trains. "I have found in my own negotiations with South West Trains that if they can help, they will, and if they can't, it is for good reason." Richard Allen, spokesman for South West Trains, said: "The trains run half hourly during peak times and on the hour off peak at Bentley station. "At the present time there is not enough demand to run extra trains but if we found there was a demand, we would review this."