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 British public should be given a “people’s dividend” worth billions of pounds as part of the national drive to hit targets for net zero carbon emissions and the restoration of nature, according to the most detailed blueprint to date for a green transition.

Free public transport, more green spaces and money for improving homes are at the core of a landmark report that proposes one of the greatest advances in the fairness agenda since the creation of the NHS.

The 70,000-word manifesto by the cross-party environmental justice commission says levelling up must be at the heart of efforts to decarbonise the UK economy to ensure policies have broad public support.

The authors – MPs, citizen’s juries, business executives, union leaders and members of the Institute for Public Policy Research – say they have learned from the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protests in France that fuel tax increases will bring a backlash if they are perceived as unfair. Instead, they cite Canada as an example of redistributing carbon tax revenues among citizens. In the UK’s case, they say this should be done in the form of grants and support for better wellbeing.

Caroline Lucas, a Green party MP and one of the co-chairs of the commission, saw parallels with the creation of the NHS in terms of the possible social impact.

After 18 months of deliberation by policymakers and citizens across areas of the UK likely to be most affected by the transition – Tees Valley and County Durham Aberdeenshire, south Wales Valleys and Thurrock in Essex – the final report says the UK is currently failing to ensure that the costs and benefits of the transition to net zero will be fairly shared.

Ministers have privately warned of a shortage of 6,000 public buses needed to get children to school in England next week for the autumn term and have urged coach companies to fill the gap.

Low passenger numbers during the pandemic have led some bus companies, particularly in rural areas, to reduce services, while social distancing requirements on public transport mean that there will be lower capacity on such services.

Fears that many of the 750,000 children who travel to school by public buses will not be able to make it to classrooms were raised at a meeting chaired by Charlotte Vere, the transport minister.

Candice Mason, of Masons coaches in Tring, Hertfordshire, took part in the meeting last month between the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT), which represents operators, and Vere. “She opened the meeting very clearly stating her focus was on home-to-school transport,” Mason said. “Her role was to try and get as many children as possible on to dedicated home-to-school services and she believed there was a shortfall of about 6,000 vehicles.”

There are enough coaches in the UK to deal with demand, according to the CPT, but nobody knows where shortages might hit.

The start of the new school year in September is still mired in uncertainty. Several recent surveys indicate that the majority of parents intend to send their children back to school at the start of term but that a minority remain unsure as to what they will do. The rise of infection rates in the UK also suggests that schools may be disrupted by local lockdowns.

Worcestershire Parkway, in Norton, near Worcester, is the first station to open in the county for more than 100 years.

About 50 people waited on the platform of the £22m station to see the first train pull in on its way to London Paddington.

Among those to get on was Mike Bond, who only travelled as far as Evesham. He said: “I just wanted to be on the first train.”

Tom Pierpoint, GWR’s interim commercial development director, said: “We know this station has been a long-held ambition for the people of Worcestershire and we have been pleased to work alongside the county council and our rail industry partners to ensure the delivery of this impressive new facility.”

Councillor Ken Pollock, Worcestershire County Council’s cabinet member for economy and infrastructure, said: “I’d like to thank all those involved in making this station, which has been talked about for more than 30 years, a reality.”

Official government figures reveal more than half of all England’s bus journeys are now made in London. 

Outside the capital, Brighton and Hove had the most journeys per head of population in 2018-19.

The Campaign for Better Transport said the new funding was a “significant step change” and welcome news for communities that had “borne the brunt” of cuts to services and “poor or non-existent local public transport in recent years”.

A 2019 study by the charity found more than 3,000 local bus routes had been lost or reduced over the past decade.

Crispin Truman from countryside charity CPRE said rural communities had been “at the end of the queue” for too long and the funding could be a “lifeline”.

He said: “If properly targeted, this investment could help tackle loneliness and isolation, reduce car dependency and slash our carbon emissions.”

Snacking should be banned on public transport and extra taxes placed on unhealthy foods to tackle child obesity, England’s outgoing chief medical officer says. 

In her final report as CMO, Dame Sally Davies also called for tighter rules on advertising and takeaways.

She said children needed more help as they were “drowning in a flood” of unhealthy options.

If ministers were not bold, she added, they would fail to cut obesity rates.

A target to halve rates by 2030 has been set.

Dame Sally said: “The unavoidable fact is that over time our environment has become very unhealthy without us realising. 

“Our children are now suffering from painful, potentially life-limiting disease. 

“Our politicians need to be bold and help everyone embrace healthier life choices.”

The proportion of obese and overweight children has doubled in the past 30 years.

Today around a third are obese or overweight by the age of 11 in England – with a minority, but growing number, classed as severely obese.

Residents were left scratching their heads after a £6,000 bus shelter appeared on a street where no buses run.

The shelter popped up in place of a rusty old pole on Tickhill Road in Maltby, South Yorkshire, earlier this month.

But council officials were left red-faced after it emerged the two-bus-a-day service along the road was axed back in March.

 “Every single day,” says Paresh Raichura, “I’m on the lookout for something new to read.” On his hour-long commute to Canary Wharf, where he works for the Financial Ombudsman, he picks up Time Out or a local paper or the freesheet Metro, but says: “I’ve stopped reading all the long novels I used to read.”

Why?

He shrugs. “Too long. Lack of time. Once you start, you can’t stop.”

And so he is delighted by a new initiative close to his workplace where, at the push of a button, he is delivered a bitesize short story, printed on to a long spool of paper, that takes no more than a few minutes to read.

 “I’m old-fashioned, I like something to hold in my hands,” he says approvingly, looking at the scrolls. He has printed off one each of the one-, three- and five-minute stories offered by the new fiction vending machine, “just to test them out”.

There can’t be many people who feel they need more things to command their time and attention. But for those who do feel insufficiently entertained, distracted or assailed, the Canary Wharf estate has installed three “short story stations” in the shopping malls and green spaces around the commercial district.

Books are too long, the development offers by way of explanation, citing research that more than a third of Britons have abandoned a novel or nonfiction work in the past year. Give us a something that we can read in the time it takes to hum a pop song, goes the logic, and we might actually make it to the end.

And to judge by the reaction of early morning commuters this week, they might be on to something – though the fact that the stories are free and print off in a few seconds undoubtedly helps.

What is the problem?

Key services for many rural communities – from local policing to public transport and ATMs – have been cut relentlessly over the past eight years. Village shops, pubs and rural town high streets are also struggling to survive in the face of online competition and out-of-town superstores. The employment picture is no more optimistic, with fewer agricultural jobs available as the farming sector continues to switch to automation.

Public transport

Local authority bus budgets in England and Wales were cut by £20.5m in 2017/2018 and the number of bus journeys has dropped by 10% since 2008, according to Campaign for Better Transport. More than 3,300 bus routes in England and Wales have been reduced or withdrawn since 2010. “The lack of affordable public transport…stops people getting access to training and jobs,” says Stephen Joseph, former chief executive for Campaign for Better Transport. “It makes access to healthy food in shops more difficult. Cuts in bus services add to poverty and social exclusion, and to isolation and loneliness.”

Broadband

Up to 50% of rural homes – around 1.5 million properties – are unable to get broadband speeds of 10 megabits per second (mbps) or higher, according to Ofcom. Government data shows average rural broadband speeds are around 5mbps, compared with 25mbps or higher in most cities.

Policing

As reported in our January issue, rural crime is at an all-time high. Almost 70% of farmers and rural-specific business owners have been victims of crime in the past 12 months. Rural crime cost the UK £44.5m in 2017 – an increase of 13.4% on the previous year.

Bank and ATM closures

Analysis by Which? shows almost two-thirds of bank  branches have closed over the past 30 years; 19% of people live almost two miles from their nearest bank. In January 2019, Royal Bank of Scotland began closing 216 branches across the UK, with the loss of 1,050 jobs. Also, 300 free-to-use cash machines are closing every month. Independent operators, who manage ATMs in many rural stores, say cashpoints are increasingly unprofitable.

Automation of agriculture

Agriculture is one of the sectors most likely to be affected by automation, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. UK agriculture currently supports around 400,000 direct jobs – from farmers to seasonal crop pickers and landscape management – but this number is dropping as robotic systems increasingly harvest crops and fruits. Driverless tractors are being developed that can plant and gather crops, while precision spraying by drones and robots is another area where human labour is set to be replaced.

Shop closures

Around 400 commercial village shops close each year, according to the Plunkett Foundation, which supports rural businesses. The internet has both positive and negative aspects for the rural economy. Businesses desperately require fast broadband to compete and operate routine tasks, while rural residents can now go online to easily buy goods not available locally. At the same time, village shops and high streets are undercut by online services with lower overheads.

House prices

The lack of new affordable housing is driving young families and working-age people out of rural areas, according to the National Housing Federation (NHF). The cheapest rural homes are 8.3 times the income of typical first-time buyers, much higher than in urban areas. The NHF says this reinforces the trend for diminishing village populations and services: almost half of households in rural areas are predicted to be aged 65 or over by 2039.

Millions of people rely on local bus services to get them to work, school, job interviews, hospital appointments and shops. According to annual bus statistics [pdf] from the Department for Transport (DfT) there were 4.7bn passenger journeys on buses in England in 2013-14. But as austerity measures make mincemeat of council budgets many vital subsidised services – which provide a bus where one is needed but no commercially operated route exists – are disappearing.

In addition to the government’s 28% cut in funding for local authorities, the bus service operators grant, which provides a fuel duty rebate to bus service operators, has also been cut by 20%. Cash-strapped local authorities have responded by reducing their funding for bus services by £44m (15%), and more than 2,000 routes or services have been lost [pdf], according to the Campaign For Better Transport (CBT).

Although they only account for 19% of bus services in England outside of London, subsidised services are often the only form of public transport isolated people can access. In counties such as Hertfordshire, Derbyshire, Hampshire and East Sussex these services have been particularly hard hit. North Yorkshire has cut 90 bus services, according to figures the CBT obtained through freedom of information requests.