Leading article: Is Wiltshire Council unable to fulfil prime mission?

MANY bus services are at risk following Wiltshire Council’s threat to remove its £5million annual subsidies is testimony to desperate times.

If the 30-plus routes are axed it is tantamount to an admission by the council that it can no longer fulfil its mission.

After all, their declared business plan priorities are to protect those who are most vulnerable, boost the local economy and bring communities together to enable and support them to do more for themselves.

Yet in the same breath they are consulting on removing the means of support for services that link the elderly from village to city centre, get people to work early morning and enable others to visit sick loved-ones in hospital in the evening.

In other words they are prepared to cut off a transport service which currently serves those who most need it in the community Bus users who want to respond have until April 4, but first they must find the consultation document on the Wiltshire Council website.

However, there are no answers that will lead, it seems, to a satisfactory end. Unless, of course, they unanimously tick the box that says they are for protecting services even if it means “that I have to pay more through local taxes etc…”

Despite a promise from the council’s head of transport Philip Whitehead to publish plans before the May local elections it is unlikely they will be rolled out until next summer. So it is still possible to have a rethink.

They may want to consider the views of the government’s Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin who had a different perspective on how the country’s bus service was going a year ago. He said then: “Buses support jobs.

Of which more than one and a half million have been created by this government. For many people, buses may be their only way to get to work. All of which means buses are one of the truly essential public services.”

He said the collaboration between the public and private sector was working. He said: “I also know just how important they are to people in the countryside. For many isolated communities, buses can be a lifeline.”

He added: “We need to make sure that as it changes people retain access to good transport. Sometimes, better, more flexible services not just a token underused one running on market days only. Or good new services that really serve visitors to the countryside – and rural people getting to jobs.

"We will all need to work together to get this right.”

Is Wiltshire Council really working together with the bus operators to achieve a satisfactory end or is it simply waving a white flag? And has proper consideration been given to a comprehensive transport strategy that includes other services?

Today the Journal asks the council to think again and engage the government, bus companies and users in a more meaningful way rather than making a rash cut to the detriment of some of its most vulnerable and needy residents.