Your report (Bus services in England face axe as end to emergency Covid funding looms, 11 January) doesn’t mention the most economic solution to connect communities to town centres – the minibus.

I am an honorary director of West Oxfordshire Community Transport(WOCT), which runs five minibus services linking estates and villages to the centres of Witney and Carterton. Some of these places used to have bus services, but the routes were hugely subsidised as there were only small numbers of passengers rattling around in expensive doubledeckers. Although overall demand was low, there was a demand for the service from people who had no access to a car – usually people on low incomes or people who are unable to drive.

A minibus of up to 16 seats is much cheaper to operate – the driver doesn’t have to have a public service vehicle licence, and the capital cost is much lower. However, all passenger minibuses in the UK are converted vans and, while the few companies that do these conversions do them reasonably well, structurally they are not really up to taking the weight of 16 passengers and a driver over a prolonged period of time.

Our services are subsidised, as most such services meeting a social need will be, by the local authorities. There is a huge opportunity for a company to be established in the UK to produce right-hand-drive minibuses for passenger use.

If it is accepted that the cost-effective solution to providing links from communities to town centres, or frequent public transport services, is the minibus then the government should seriously consider establishing a minibus production company in this country.

Mike Parker

Director, WOCT; former director general, Nexus (the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive)

The U.K. government is to consult on introducing a lower carbon fuel to gas stations, a move that could cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the transport sector.

The fuel in question is called E10, which contains as much as 10% bioethanol in its mix. At the moment, E10 is not available in the U.K., although the government said Wednesday that the blend was used in a number of other countries including Germany, France and Finland.

Currently, unleaded petrol in the U.K. has up to 5% bioethanol in its mix, with this type of fuel called E5.

The government said the E10 blend could potentially reduce CO2 emissions from transport by 750,000 tons annually, which equates to removing approximately 350,000 cars off the road.

“The next 15 years will be absolutely crucial for slashing emissions from our roads, as we all start to feel the benefits of the transition to a zero-emission future,” Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, said in a statement Wednesday.

“But before electric cars become the norm, we want to take advantage of reduced CO2 emissions today,” he added. “This small switch to petrol containing bioethanol at 10% will help drivers across country reduce the environmental impact of every journey.” 

Williams went on to explain that some retailers would “also not have the capacity to be able to provide both E5 and E10 fuels on forecourts, so the impact is likely to be most keenly felt by those with incompatible vehicles in rural areas.”

Residents in a Shropshire village say potholes are so common they amount to “tax” on rural drivers.

Businessman Ian Field, who lives in Beckbury, says he has spent £6,000 on vehicle repairs in the last two years.

He has written to the government with a dossier of photographs showing a dozen large potholes.

He says they are strewn across all major routes into the village and many of them are deep, posing a danger to vehicles.

“I’d go as far to say that this is akin to an additional tax for residents or a small business operating in a rural area – you simply wouldn’t have this in a major town,” he said.

A Shropshire Council spokesman said the local authority was “working hard to identify and tackle potholes and other defects”.

He said the number of potholes typically increase by about a fifth at this time of year and the recent weather had “amplified the problem”.

A law could be strengthened to punish people who throw litter out of a vehicle window in Wales.

It would mean that the registered owner of a vehicle could be fined, regardless of whether they threw it or were even in the car at the time.

Councils are responsible for cleaning most roads and the Welsh Government wants to give them additional powers to fine the owner of the offending vehicle.

It is a criminal offence to throw litter out of a vehicle and people can be prosecuted and fined up to £2,500 if caught.

Most councils issue fixed penalty notices if they believe someone has littered, asking the DVLA for motorists’ details.

But they have problems if the owner does not pay or tell the authority who threw the litter.

A “very contrite” Duke of Edinburgh has personally apologised for his part in a car crash to a woman who was left with a broken wrist.

In a letter to Emma Fairweather, Prince Philip, 97, suggested glare from the winter sun may have been to blame for the incident as he pulled out from a side road on to the A149 near the Sandringham estate in Norfolk on 17 January.

His apology emerged following widespread criticism of him and Buckingham Palace over the handling of the incident. Fairweather called the duke “highly insensitive and inconsiderate” after he was photographed less than 48 hours later at the wheel of a replacement car without a seatbelt on. She joined calls for him to be prosecuted if found to be at fault over the collision.

In a typed letter to Fairweather, seen by the Sunday Mirror, Philip wrote: “I would like you to know how very sorry I am for my part in the accident at the Babingley crossroads. I have been across that crossing any number of times and I know very well the amount of traffic that uses that main road.

The government’s clean air strategy, which was published on Monday, describes reducing pollution from nitrogen oxides (NOx) as its most immediate challenge.

NOx emissions come mainly from diesel vehicles. Much of the strategy on road transport had been announced previously, including the pledge from July to stop all sales of new conventional petrol or diesel powered cars and vans by 2040. 

But it devolves responsibility for reducing NOx emissions mainly to a local level….

I assume this means some process of beating local government for a failure to deliver on a poorly thought through national policy stance. Some things never change!!!

British appetite for new cars surged ahead in April, as a rosy outlook for the UK economy triggered an upwardly revised sales forecast in 2014.

New car registrations rose 8.2% last month, to 176,820 vehicles, marking the 26th month of rising sales and matching the previous longest period of expansion, in the late 1980s.

It followed a 17.7% increase in March, which is typically a strong period for registrations because it is a plate change month.

Demand and an improved economic backdrop prompted the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), the trade body which publishes the data, to revise its forecasts for new car sales in 2014 from 2.3m to more than 2.4m. That would be a 6% increase on 2013.

Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, said: “After the bumper plate-change month of March, the UK car market returned to more modest but still positive growth in April. This marks 26 consecutive months of growth as GDP continues to pick up, inflation falls and wage levels improve.”

April’s registrations took the total in the first four months of the year to 864,942, up 12.5% on the same period in 2013. Sales have been supported in recent months by the wide availability of car finance deals and a rising demand for more fuel efficient vehicles.