A well-used Purbeck shopping service for elderly people has been suspended and its future is under threat.

For 20 years the probation service in Dorset has run a popular scheme collecting elderly and disabled people from their homes, helping them shop and taking them home.

Assisted Shopping Schemes operated in Purbeck, Christchurch and Weymouth, helping 130 vulnerable people a fortnight.

But it is feared a Home Office circular tightening up Risk of Harm guidance may spell an end to the shopping trips.

On Wednesdays the bus picked up people from Wareham through to Upton, taking them to Tesco at Fleetsbridge.

Upton and Purbeck councillor Fred Drane said he had received calls from people living in sheltered housing, upset that their shopping trips had been suspended.

"Elderly and disabled people were affected when the bus routes were changed and now this service has been suspended," he said.

He has arranged with a local taxi to transport people to the shops at Upton at a favourable rate and is talking to the district and county councils about what can be done.

"I feel for the people who are stranded," he said.

As does National Offender Management Service's Mike Thomas, manager of the community service unit for Dorset.

The Home Office circular says that at no point should offenders on community rehabilitation orders with an unpaid work requirement be in sole charge of children or vulnerable adults, he said.

"This is a great scheme and I don't want to pull the plug on it," he said. "But we can't possibly provide the resources that are required."

The scheme was for carefully assessed, very low risk offenders, he said.

"What we try and do as part of the scheme is get offenders to develop empathy with others who are in a worse situation than them," he said.