Stepping in to Protect Rural Bus Services from Cuts Made Elsewhere!

As you have probably heard through the national media, a lot of Councils across the country are slashing their support for bus services, with rural routes in particular under severe threat. By contrast, here in Bedford Borough, where most rural routes are subsidised by the Council, we are working to protect residents' access to services and even improve them where possible. In the urban area, where services are run commercially by Stagecoach from Monday to Saturday, we have introduced a new Sunday service which mirrors the routes which run for the rest of the week and offers a vast improvement on the confusing, little-used routes which ran previously. With the rural buses, a range of difficulties have arisen due to the cuts of neighbouring authorities to their support for cross-boundary services. However, thanks to our extensive consultation with rural bus users and our close work with the bus operators, I'm pleased to say that we are doing all that we possibly can to make sure local residents don't miss out due to changes made by other Councils.

The 152 service is a good example of the sort of problem which has come up. Conservative Cambridgeshire County Council has cut all of its portion of funding for this route, which runs up through a number of villages to the north of Bedford, then onto Kimbolton and St Neots. Saving this bus service is not just about retaining our funding to maintain the Bedford Borough portion of the route, of course. Many of the users of this service rely on it in order to get to the Doctor's Surgery and other services in Kimbolton. It's therefore no use to them if it only runs to the northern edge of Bedford Borough, short of Kimbolton in Cambridgeshire! So we have stepped in and have made an arrangement with the operator for the service to not only continue, but to run through to Kimbolton.

Other such problems have arisen due to Conservative Central Bedfordshire's withdrawal of the E3 route serving Willington Loop and removal of all of its support for the Sunday V2 service which serves Wootton and Stewartby in addition to Marston Moretaine and Cranfield in Central Bedfordshire. We are working hard to provide solutions to these difficulties and, as I say, are doing our upmost to protect local residents against the actions of neighbouring authorities.