County Council "in danger of wrecking village bus service"

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 5th Sep 2005

Norman Baker has warned that council plans to tear up the timetable for the lifeline 125 bus route are being mishandled and are causing considerable anxiety in the villages the bus serves, including Glynde, Firle and Beddingham. He also says the proposed changes could lead to a reduction in usage, exactly the opposite of what the council is aiming for.

The county council has decided it wants to move towards a "more responsive" service, by eliminating nearly all fixed timetable journeys, and introducing instead a service where journeys are ordered by telephone - assuming of course that a bus is available.

Norman has received a number of complaints from Glynde, Beddingham and Firle about the changes and is now calling on the county council to put any changes on hold until proper consultations have been carried out with both users and the local parish councils.

He says: "What is proposed is a major change to a long-established local bus route, yet there appears to have been very little discussion, if any, with interested parties. To make matters worse, the leaflet the council has produced is extremely opaque and misleading in its presentation.

"I am also concerned that this change, if it goes ahead, will introduce a level of uncertainty for regular users that will force them to look for other ways to make their journeys. Under the new system, a bus can be booked a week in advance on a first-come, first-served basis in either direction. That means that anyone can book a bus to go from, say, Lewes town centre to Berwick at 08.30 on a Monday, and there would then be no bus available for all those who depend on an early bus to get from the villages into Lewes to work. This is crazy.

"I recognise that the council is trying to find ways to increase bus patronage, and I welcome that, but this particular proposal is ill-thought out and likely to have the opposite effect. They need to go back to the drawing board."