Have Your Say on County Bus Services

There’s still time to have your say on bus services subsidised by the county council. Your thoughts will help decide which routes continue, get altered or get axed.

Essex County Council are in the final month on their consultation into the provision of 162 local bus services. They want your views of these routes to help them decide which ones provide value for money for taxpayers and which ones should be altered to meet user needs, and which services need cutting.

The majority of the bus network in Essex (around 85%) is run commercially. The remaining 15% of services are not commercially viable and the transport providers will therefore not run them.

As Essex’s local transport authority, when no commercial service is provided, the County Council has a duty to consider whether one is needed, and if, in the Council’s view it is, then to provide it.

The strong financial pressures on all local government funding means that ECC must look at how it will provide all its services to make sure that the limited funding available is focused where it will be of most benefit to the public.

Value for Taxpayers

At present ECC spends around £10m of taxpayer’s money on these subsidised services each year.

The local bus service priority policy includes a value for money measure to ensure that taxpayers are not funding services that are not used much or have a high cost.  This measure is currently valued at £5 per passenger journey. If the cost to the taxpayer is over £5 per journey made, then ECC will review the service. Some ECC subsidised services are costing taxpayers more than £10 per passenger journey to support.

But before ECC make any decisions to alter or cut a service they are keen to hear your thoughts on supported bus services in your area before the consultation concludes on October 5.  ECC will collate all your responses from their survey and summarise them as part of their report that will help decide whether the proposal should be implemented.

How to participate

The County Council strongly encourage individuals to participate in the survey online by visiting our dedicated website at https://consultations.essex.gov.uk/iptu/2023

In instances where online submission is not feasible, ECC are pleased to offer hard copies of the consultation materials upon request. These can be obtained by contacting us via email at passenger.transport@essex.gov.uk or by calling either 0345 743 0430 or 0345 603 7631.