We need to tackle the rural bus dilemma

The Government must look at ways of putting country buses back on the roads before it is too late, Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger warns Defra Secretary Steve Barclay

DEAR Steve, As the NFU will readily testify, I have not always seen eye to eye with it – or, for that matter, been prepared to accept its assertion to be speaking with the voice of all British farmers.

However, reading its briefing paper prior to this week’s debate on rural transport I am of the opinion that it has got it just about right: the countryside is getting less than a fair deal. Much less.

Particularly in the matter of bus services – and in this case one should use the word ‘service’ in its loosest possible sense.

You see, Steve, it’s not like London where if you miss one bus you can be certain there will be another along in a few minutes. Out in the countryside you don’t so much need a watch to work out what time the next bus is: you need a calendar.

Any number of my constituents can recall the days when practically every village was served by buses on a daily basis and even the really remote places had a service two or three days a week.

But then more and more people started running their own cars, bus use declined dramatically and as a result scores of routes were simply deleted from the map because they didn’t pay.

But now the position is being reversed. Because of the paucity of public transport, rural families are 70 per cent more likely to be car owners than their urban counterparts despite the fact they are less able to afford to be because rural incomes are generally lower.

So with car ownership becoming beyond the pockets of so many of them, it is vital that we should be thinking seriously about putting more country buses back on the roads. And we aren’t.

As the aforesaid NFU points out when you add in fifth-rate broadband speeds and lousy mobile phone coverage suddenly most of rural Britain appears a pretty deprived place.

And, worryingly, the decline appears to be gaining momentum. Essential services are becoming inaccessible for people living in rural areas because local outlets have closed due to loss of viability. And just to expand on that, we are talking about all areas from education, health, and retail to leisure facilities and specialist services for children and older people.

What particularly grieves me is that even what are regarded as the key bus routes that remain are constantly under threat because of withdrawal of funding support.

Meanwhile in Somerset you will barely see a bus running after dark or at weekends and the timetabling generally is not geared to people’s needs.

In one case brought to my attention, a non-car-owning village resident was unable to take an offered job in the county town 12 miles away because the last bus home departed half an hour before her working day ended.

I am afraid we have got our transport priorities badly wrong. Instead of trying expensively to shave 30 minutes off the journey time from

London to Birmingham rather than merely upgrading existing routes we should be spreading the money around; restoring mobility to rural households so they can access shops, medical centres, railway stations and jobs without having to lay out such a large chunk of the family budget.

Because if we don’t, if we continue to stand back and observe the current decline as it accelerates, we shall be wiping scores of functioning, well-balanced, rural communities off the map and turning them into soulless resorts for second-home owners.

Getty Images Buses are few and far between in the countryside, says Ian Liddell-Grainger