Is Mid Suffolk District Council really committed to its sustainable travel policy? We may be about to find out...

Regular readers will know that I take a particular interest in buses, possibly because I am a non-driver. In London, that was just fine - why would you have a car in inner London when traffic speeds are glacial and there’s an excellent public transport system? Out here in the Suffolk countryside, it offers rather more of a challenge.

Creeting St Peter saw its last scheduled bus service in 2011, not that it impinged upon anyone’s consciousness. Indeed, when I raised it at an early Parish Council meeting, my fellow councillors didn’t seem to know that it existed, perhaps because it ran on Thursdays only with just one journey in each direction between Stowmarket and the Creetings. We do have demand responsive transport, but it is likewise little known about, which does make it a bit easier for me to use it as part of my usual route to work. But I digress...

The new business and enterprise park on the edge of the Parish is to be managed by a development company on behalf of its 100% owner, Mid Suffolk District Council. It promises, or at least, promised up to 4,500 new jobs which, on the face of it, is a good thing - we can argue about the quality of those jobs another day. And it struck me that having a bus link to Stowmarket would be a good thing, given that it’s more than one mile from the station to the nearest point of the development.

Coincidentally, in July the District Council agreed to create a “Sustainable Travel Action Plan” so you might think that, if you were going to bring 4,500 workers to an edge of town location, encouraging public transport use might fit neatly into that. Indeed, I found myself wondering if such a link could be extended to serve Creeting St Peter and Stowupland (which is growing fast and lost its regular bus service a few years ago) in a circular route to link up with Stowmarket station and the town centre.

It is now clear that there is no intention to make provision for public transport - I asked and have a written answer from the development company to that effect, which rather disappoints me. The justification is that there is a bus stop within 400 metres of the entrance to the development - the fact that two of the six services that serve the stop run on a Thursday only, and two others are school services appears to have passed them by. And so, I’m going to have to challenge the District Council to “put their money where their mouth is” in terms of the environment and sustainability, and to adhere to the policies they themselves set.

It is unacceptable in the modern era to build a development which effectively obliges its workforce to drive. Given that the employees won’t just come from Stowmarket and the surrounding villages - the population couldn’t supply 4,500 additional workers even if it wanted to - there will be significant increases in traffic, air pollution and noise, and any mitigation that might reduce traffic volumes would be welcome.

Ironically, the development company have been quite responsive in other areas, so it would be nice if they could be persuaded to improve this aspect. We’ll just have to see, I guess...