Bus Service Update

Following the cessation of the 7/7a bus, East Woodhay PC and Highclere PC continue to seek solutions to try and restore a local bus service. To further this effort recently a number of EWPC councillors and a representative from Neighbour Care attended a Hampshire County Council (HCC) forum, hosted by their transport team (who are responsible for bus services) and bus operators. This focused on community operated services to replace cancelled bus operations. This became clear as not being feasible for ourselves due to the funding model presented.

The forum also allowed ourselves to have further discussion with the HCC Transport Team and potential bus operators. HCC reiterated they will not restore the 7/7a service. We discussed the option of providing a local service for the area based out of Newbury. HCC stated they had looked at this option before the cessation of the 7/7a. HCC did not have the funding to support it, so they would not pursue this option.

We discussed the local service option with the bus operators. No operators were interested in restoring the 7/7a service. Only two bus operators were interested in looking at operating a local service. These were Basingstoke Connect (based out of Basingstoke) and Newbury and District (based out of Greenham and who operate other Newbury based local services). To review the feasibility of servicing the route these operators required the usage data from the 7/7a service. We were able to push HCC to provide the usage data from the previous provider, Stagecoach. However, on reviewing this information it does not provide the resolution of data the operators require to access feasibility.

We are continuing to have further discussions with Basingstoke Connect and Newbury and District to review service options, funding and the feasibility of restoring a local service. At present the feasibility of a short / medium term solution does not look optimistic. However, we have identified that there may be a potential solution on a longer term basis as the Watermill Bridge development has a Newbury / Watermill Bridge route. We will discuss the feasibility of extending the route to cover our area with the HCC, West Berks, the developer and the bus operators.

In parallel we are also in discussion with Newbury Handybus. This provides a request operation and not a regular service, so limited for our community. They have recently performed an audit of interest from the community via Facebook and got a good response. They are in the process of reviewing the feedback to determine if they wish to move forward and will keep us informed.

The two parish councils will continue these discussions with the bus operators to explore the feasibility of all the options for a short /long term solution. We will communicate progress in future posts.