Chambers bus company, which provides the 84 bus from Sudbury to Colchester, serving Thomas Gainsborough school for villages along the A134, have just announced that as of the end of March they intend reducing the service to school times only, and withdrawing the public bus service from Stoke by Nayland entirely. This is because the reduction in pupils eligible for school transport on that route reduces the income they receive and therefore reduces the overall viabilty of the whole service.

We have been pointing out to SCC for months that the policy would have not only a highly detrimental impact in villages split - or in the case of villages like Stoke by Nayland, split off - by the school transport policy, but that it would also have impact beyond just school runs. We now find ourselves in exactly the position we feared. And  this scenario will almost certainly be replicated in other parts of the county. The people who use buses most in villages are the young, the old and the disabled. Now, as a consequence of this disastrous policy, not only are children in Stoke by Nayland no longer eligible for transport to their catchment school, but residents who don't drive will be unable to get to the doctor's surgery. For instance. 

As reported on here, the school bus policy is currently under (internal) review, due to report in February to SCC scrutiny committee. The scope of that review is about the implementation of the school transport policy, but there is potential for the review to highlight areas in the policy which require attention, and we of course hope that this occurs. (As has already been made clear, the implementation of the policy has been extremely difficult because the policy itself is both flawed and rigidly applied.)

The school bus policy was redrawn without thought as to school catchments, without apparent reference to SCC's responsibilties for public bus provision, and in compete ignorance of their so-called environmental objectives. You couldn't get a better example of silo thinking. 

The timeline for Chambers' consultation and the review overlap.  We will be making sure councillors understand that not only is this announcement a direct consequence of their flawed policy, it is, if they act very swiftly, reversable.