On the Buses

I battled to bring the Suffolk Link Community Bus cover to Lakenheath & parts of Row Heath, now for the rest!

Since I became a Councillor one of the most important issues raised with me by Row Heath’s residents is the bus service. In Suffolk outside of Ipswich there are few commercially viable routes and almost all have subsidy to varying degrees to provide a service.

A recent poll by Ipsos Mori on behalf of Age UK indicated that for over 65s the Concessionary Bus Pass and buses are almost as important as the NHS and certainly in our rural communities as people get older they begin to think about a time when they may not have a car and what living in our rural villages will look like then.

Equally the price of fuel seem to rise at an alarming rate consequently many people will simply not be able to afford a car in the future and so our public transport services will become more and more important.

Accordingly I have worked hard to see services maintained and new services introduced. My main successes are two fold firstly in Lakenheath we now have a service that allows people to get a bus to Mildenhall for connections to work and back again. And secondly in part of my patch we now have coverage form Suffolk Link Community Bus, which is a on demand bus service that seeks to provide services where scheduled ones do not cover both in terms of area and times, it’s not a taxi service but does provide a service.

http://www.suffolkonboard.com or call 01638 664 304

Of course there is a ways to go and as was recently pointed out to me at a meetings with residents the Concessionary Bus Pass gets you to Mildenhall to just miss a connection to Bury St. Edmunds on Market Day, equally the Community services does not yet cover the whole of Row Heath, The system is not perfect but I am determined it will improve and will work to make sure the services for the communities of Row Heath are continually improving.

At the county level I and my fellow Conservative’s remain fully committed to the Concessionary Bus Pass service which costs us all about £7Million a year to provide and within the financial restrains we set ourselves and the necessary reduction in Central Government funding, absolutely committed to providing as many scheduled services as we can and where they do not exist the continuing roll out of our bus on demand service.