WE NEED YOUR HELP- Hampshire County Council are proposing to cut bus subsidies across the county...

WE NEED YOUR HELP- Hampshire County Council are proposing to cut bus subsidies across the county, including cutting community transport. This is part of a raft of other cuts being proposed, and will be discussed at the next Full HCC meeting in Winchester on Thursday 2nd November.

The impact on the Fleet and Church Crookham area would be huge, as the Fleet Link (our community dial-a-ride) could be cut, along with our number 7 bus that runs from Aldershot through Fleet and onto Reading. We are being told that the number 10 should be safe as it has school subsidies, which are ringfenced.

Our group Buses in Fleet feel that this will have a detrimental effect on many people in our community, from workers who rely on the bus to get to work, young families who rely on the bus to get to town or community events, to the elderly or infirm who rely on the number 7 as well as the Fleet Link service to get to town and other locations..

We feel that these cuts will affect many people and would likely increase the costs of adult social care, as the loss of the Fleet Link service will mean that some elderly and infirm people will lose their independence, creating loneliness and reliance on adult social services to enable them to attend medical appointments.

We urge you to contact your Hampshire County Councillor to let them know your feelings about these proposed cuts and how they will affect you or your family. You can use this link to find your Councillor - just go down to the box where you can fill in your postcode, and press 'go' - http://democracy.hants.gov.uk/mgFindMember.aspx You can then click on their name to find their contact details.

One of our members of our Buses in Fleet group will be speaking out against the cuts at the start of the Full Council meeting on 2nd November, having submitted a request for a deputation, where members of the public can read out a prepared statement. In order to capture the impact of these potential cuts to services, we would like you to contact us with your stories of how the cuts would affect you or your family. We will not use your name in the speech, but we do want to ensure we have some real stories of how the cuts would affect our community. Please email [email protected]

Buses in Fleet is a very small group (5-6 regular members) of local people representing the members of our community who rely on bus or community transport. If you could spare any time at all to help us, we would welcome you to join us, please get in touch.