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Happy New Year - I hope that the last year of this millennium will be a good year for all of you.
The Council is now working on our budget for 1999/2000. We received a fair settlement from Central Government and therefore expect to be able to maintain services without having to raise Council Tax too much. However, we do have to consider filling some of the gaps made by cuts in the funding for our services from the County Council. One of the most urgent of these is the pensioners' bus pass. This year the County Council cut their subsidy for this bus pass and cut the subsidy to some of the bus routes through East Cambridgeshire. They did this after we had set our budget so we had to decide how best to use what funds we had. We decided to subsidise the routes, so that the threatened bus services kept running. But this meant that we couldn't replace the County Council's subsidy for the pensioners' bus pass. I know that many local people have had to travel less because they no longer have a bus pass. I was therefore delighted to join with other Councillors at our last meeting in calling for every effort to be made to allocate sufficient funds in next year's budget to restore the bus pass.
Staying with buses, the service between Cambridge and Newmarket/Ely through Reach now has several extra buses - including an hourly service from 6.20 in the evening to 11.20 at night from Cambridge to Reach and from 6.47 in the evening, 7.44 and then hourly to 10.44 at night from Reach to Cambridge. This new service means that you can spend an evening in Cambridge and enjoy a drink without having to worry about parking or driving home.
This improved service is very welcome, but I have received many complaints about the lack of timetables for it and have taken this up with Stagecoach. I also received many complaints last year about the buses being very unreliable. Stagecoach promises that its service is now reliable, and I have found it to be so over the last few days. To make sure that it is reliable I am joining with fellow Councillors across Cambridgeshire in a Bus Stop Watch. Asking regular bus passengers to keep a diary of their bus trips. I hope the diaries will show that the service is reliable and I will be able to congratulate Stagecoach. But if the diaries show that the buses are still not up to standard, I will visit Stagecoach to discuss the problems and take further action. If you would be able to keep a bus diary, or have any other comments on the bus service, please contact me on 742509.
Charlotte Cane (Liberal Democrat Councillor for the Swaffhams and Reach)
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