Letter: Withdrawal of 20-year-old Bus Service Leaves Us Unamused

Published on: 16 Aug, 2024
Updated on: 16 Aug, 2024

From Dave Middleton

I write to express my dismay, along with well over 30 other service users, at the decision by Surrey County Council to withdraw its funding of the twice-weekly 538 Stoughton to Burpham Sainsbury’s shopper bus service, causing the loss of that service, with effect from the 30th of this month.

This service has run for at least 20 years and provides a vital and direct link between the north part of Stoughton, Bellfields, Slyfield, Jacob’s Well and Burpham for the mostly elderly and in some cases less-able people who use it on Tuesdays and Fridays, to shop at the large Burpham Sainsbury’s store and indeed the nearby Aldi store.

This link is even more valuable to north Stoughton residents, since the re-routing of previous buses and the subsequent loss of the number 9 service to the large Tesco at Bannisters Fields last October.  Losing the 538 will now leave us with no timetabled direct link to either of those large supermarket locations.

The 538 is also not just a shopper bus, its journeys are also a social event for the users, who are a friendly bunch and use the trip as an opportunity to have a catch-up, a good old-fashioned chat and even the odd moan.

This valuable and much-appreciated service has, until now, been subsidised by Surrey County Council, but is to be withdrawn and “replaced” with an “on-demand” minibus service, known as “Surrey Connect”.

While this new service may be suitable and perhaps even beneficial for some, for the bulk of the current users of the 538 it will not be.  Many do not have internet access or smartphones, so will not be able to book online or using the Surrey Connect App and will be obliged to book by telephone, potentially at additional cost.

The current vehicle used is a 25 to 28-seater bus, with a wide entrance door, the capacity to kneel at the kerb and a simple ramp for wheelchairs and shopping trollies, which can be operated in a matter of a few seconds by the driver.  It is an ideal vehicle.

Unfortunately, the new on-demand service uses vehicles which are not as suitable as the existing one, having a narrow entrance, two or three steps up to the deck of the bus, which will be a struggle with heavy bags and trollies, and much less seating capacity, with much less space for loaded shopping bags and trollies.

A great number of the bus stops on the existing route served by the 538 bus will, apparently, not be served, as it seems that not all of the current bus stops are to be designated as pick-up and drop-off points for the new service.

Presently it appears that long sections of Grange Road, Stoughton Road and large sections of Bellfields and Slyfield are to be left out and the elderly and less-able users, me included, will have to walk some considerable distance, if indeed they can, to access the designated stops.

Even now, with barely two weeks until the so-called replacement service is due to start, nowhere can a full list of designated stops be seen.  Telephoning the booking service and looking at the website for Surrey Connect has proved fruitless.

The publicity, consultation and notice of withdrawal for this matter have been entirely inadequate.  The consultation, such as it was, took place over the Christmas period during November and December of 2022, when no doubt people had other things on their minds and appears to have been entirely carried out online.

Certainly, none of us existing users of the service were aware of the consultation, nor the decision to withdraw the service, until I happened to chance upon a post from a member of the public mentioning it on a Facebook group, who in turn, had seen it on a Hampshire bus users’ blog.  Even now, just two weeks from termination, there are no notices on the buses, or the stops on the route, only a small notice online on the bus operator’s website and a few posts on Facebook.  All of this is effectively completely invisible to most of the users of the service.

Back on July 7, very shortly after I discovered the planned end of the service and on behalf of my fellow service users, I emailed the relevant Surrey County Councillors of the areas affected and have emailed them again a number of times, plus sending other emails to the leader of SCC leader, Tim Oliver, SCC Cllrs Matt Furniss, (Con, Cabinet member for Transport) and Keith Witham (Con, Worplesdon), both of whom sit on the SCC Transport Committee and will have had a hand in this matter.

The few responses, such as they are, have been at best vague or irrelevant, failing to answer the points raised. And my emails to the principal SCC councillor for the area concerned (my local county councillor), Julia McShane (Lib Dem, Guildford North), have gone entirely unanswered, which is not really good enough.

All in all, the feeling among the actual users of the 538 is that the whole matter has been pushed through as quietly as possible to be presented as a done deal.

To put it as politely as possible, in the words of the late Queen Victoria, “We are not amused.”

Editor’s response: The Dragon has asked local county councillors to comment.

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