Stowupland loses its Sunday and evening bus services

I've been waiting for the promised consultation on local bus services for some time now. It would appear that, like an 87A bus on a Sunday, it will never come, as the announcement of what survives the 53% cut in subsidy has been made via the Suffolk Onboard website. From a personal perspective, the announcement falls into two parts, the effect on my own village, and that on the village next door.

In Creeting St Peter, we've lost our market day bus, route 453, which connected the Creetings with Stowmarket on a Thursday. To be honest, very few people even seemed to know that it exists, and with the new Suffolk Links service, villagers are probably better connected than they were before. Overall, the changes benefit us, although bus ridership figures are probably very low - you wouldn't really choose to live in Creeting St Peter if you didn't already drive.

In Stowupland, on the other hand, losing all evening and Sunday services is a real blow. There are plenty of people, especially at the Reeds Way end of the village, for whom the bus service is important, connecting them to family in Stowupland or Needham Market, and who will now be dependent on expensive taxis. What I find mystifying is that the service connects Cedars Park to Stowmarket as well, and whilst the journey is walkable, it probably isn't with shopping, or children, or if you're elderly. Effectively, this decision removes the service from about 8,000 people in Stowupland and Cedars Park, and if you add on those people in Needham Market and Stowmarket, whose connection with Ipswich is lost, there are a lot of people affected by this decision.

It needn't have been like this. The Liberal Democrat Group on Suffolk County Council proposed changes to the budget that would have saved services to Stowupland for at least a year, giving time to see whether other arrangements could be made. Frankly, I could have accepted the loss of market day services given the expansion of the Suffolk Links services, reducing the cost of bus subsidy somewhat, but the principle of maintaining a network of buses remains a sound one. The Conservatives, however, chose to ignore the opportunity.

The lack of consultation bothers me too. Yes, we all accept that cuts have to be made, but the idea that you withdraw bus service from places where new houses are being built in large numbers (another 300 or so under construction in Cedars Park as I type), seems ludicrous. Add to the fact that there is a significant elderly population in Stowupland, and also a fair bit of social housing, likely to be inhabited by people who can't afford cars, and this looks like a poor decision taken by a portfolio holder who doesn't care.

I should declare an interest. I don't drive, and use the community bus that serves Creeting St Peter to go to work. I don't actually use route 87 or 87A, but if I lived in Stowupland, I would. What I do know is that, in a county that has a 'Greenest County' portfolio, cutting a main public transport artery like this sends out a clear signal that the Conservatives talk a good game but act like vandals.