The County Council came to the Moorlands in April to explain the Ten-Year Transport Review to councillors, specifically to talk about buses. Four officers made the trek from Stafford to the land that public transport (almost) forgot and we have to admit that they came impressively prepared with facts and figures. At times it felt like being a housewife (it was always a housewife) in 1970’s Leningrad – scanning the shelves for that elusive bunch of bananas or, if they were lucky, grapes. If the County cupboard wasn’t completely bare, it has to be said the pickings were scarce. Most County bus money is spent on propping up existing services on which, as across most of the country, passenger numbers have not fully recovered from the Covid epidemic. But like that Leningrad housewife, we do not give up – and know that in times of scarcity, information is the most precious commodity.
The April meeting was arranged by Cllrs Charlotte Atkins and Mark Johnson as an introduction but the County officers and have said they will be returning to the Moorlands in June or July. At that point we might be able to put more detailed proposals forward to the County. While we can’t expect a major shift towards buses, we definitely can achieve some improvements at the edges. A new service now connects Biddulph and Kidsgrove, allowing people (including students) to link with rail services into Stoke and elsewhere. The officers said that numbers using this service were encouraging – and still rising.
A new Sunday service connecting Leek and Buxton is due to start on 12 May. This will be run by Ashbourne Community Transport (ACT), familiar to MCA as the group who run Moorlands Connect. The future of that service was very much on the agenda at the meeting. Alison McCrea and Mark Johnson, who together with Cllr Jonathan Kempster are running the Moorlands Connect campaign, made sure the council chamber was amply supplied with posters and flyers. They also held a separate meeting with ACT to discuss the planned changes to the service this summer. Frustratingly, they are being held up till halfway through the tourist season by issues with the booking app and County agreement, but they should deliver an enhanced service. Put simply, the area of operation will be divided into two zones, North and South, each with a dedicated bus, and with an extra bus operating to provide flexibility.
The service will also be extended East to the Buxton/Ashbourne road and in the south to Cheadle and Denstone and a small bit of East Staffordshire. Encouragingly, the County officer responsible for Moorlands Connect has arranged to come to Leek in early May to meet with Alison, Mark and Jonathan. ACT have produced some excellent promotional videos which we hope to run at MCA’s Hug Festival in June. We all know that the future of the service in its present form is uncertain beyond September 2025 when the funding runs out. But for the first time since the service was introduced there is at least a group of people who have mobilised the County, woken up a previously absent-minded District Council, and are not going to let the Moorlands' more rural areas be the preserve of those able to afford cars.