Bus Consultation - please make your views known

We are all interested in maintaining the No 68 community bus. I have been told by the county council transport people that it will continue after March 2025 when the first tranche of funding ceases. However, OCC are carrying out a consultation and have asked the parish councils to forward their comments and suggestions about continuation to OCC.

It is important that we have as much input from residents as possible. Clearly it is heavily subsidised to the tune of £181,350 but the run a regular and fairly frequent service. Do we need this to be as frequent. We might, for example, consider reducing the runs to Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday and reduce the number of journeys every day. Could you please think about this and discuss what you would realistically like to see. I would prefer to have a reduced service which will be maintained rather than a “full on” service which might prove to be too expensive for OCC and which ends up terminated after a while.

Please pass any comments to your parish council or to me. The deadline for submissions is Friday October 11th so comments to the parish councils will need to get your comments well in advance of this date.

Many thanks

Paul Barrow

District Councillor

[email protected]