East Midlands Mayor told of bus woes in Derbyshire

At a recent meeting in her Chesterfield office, local campaigners from Friends of the Earth spoke to the Mayor on a number of topics, including public transport.

The Mayor heard about the problems we have with bus reliability, with services that don’t run on Sundays, or in the evenings, and the services that no longer come at all.

Bus user groups throughout Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire contributed examples of where their bus services are inadequate or missing altogether, and a list was shared with the Mayor.

Other mayoral authorities have determined franchising is the best way to improve their bus services. Greater Manchester started to franchise services in 2023, and after a year have found improvements in reliability and increased passenger numbers.

Mayor Tracy Brabin in West Yorkshire has announced that buses in her region will be brought back under public control from 2027.

Mayor Claire said she is keen to work with bus operators to see what improvements can be made in the short term, while waiting to see what changes the Government make to franchising arrangements in the forthcoming Buses Bill.

In the meantime, bus deregulation means that Chatsworth House is now served by more buses than most major locations in the Peak Park. It’s visited daily by three regular services, the 160 (4 buses a day), the 170 (24 buses a day), the 218 (19 buses a day) and both red (half-hourly) and blue (hourly) Peak Sightseers.

On a Sunday, the 58 from Macclesfield visits twice. The diversion to Chatsworth adds about 15 minutes to the journey time of the 170 to Chesterfield or the 218 to Sheffield. That’s a quarter of an hour longer journey for people going to hospital, to work, or to college (half an hour extra total travel time if they have to go to Chatsworth on the way home as well).

A sensible (franchised?) system might instead have a half-hourly shuttle bus service travelling between Chatsworth, Baslow, Bakewell and Matlock, connecting to longer distance services at those places.

In the meantime, let’s hope that it’s not too long before more places in Derbyshire have nearly as many buses as Chatsworth every day!