Reverse cuts to local bus routes throughout Aberdeenshire

Our rural communities highly depend upon essential bus services, which are due to be cut in line with Aberdeenshire Council budgets from April 2019.

Some local communities in Aberdeenshire, for example Lumsden, have a population of under 300 people and are already rated 1 (the lowest) for Geographic Access to Services on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. This means that Lumsden is among many other rural villages with lack of access to essential services. In fact 44% of Aberdeenshire is ranked within Scotland's most deprived for service access. The bus routes provide vital transport links.

As a community, Lumsden, like many other villages in Aberdeenshire, does not have the amenities needed for people to survive independently of local towns. There is no shop, or nursery. No doctors or dentists, limited employment, and as of April 2019, there will be very limited opportunities to access these essential services without owning or having access to a car.

Our communities do not believe you can measure the impact of the proposed cuts simply by counting the how many people use the bus and using this as a marker for cutting our lifelines. Although numbers are small, they are used regularly and out of necessity.

These cuts will hit the most vulnerable people in our community; the young, the elderly and those who are low or unwaged. We believe this will contribute to wider social and economic inequality, causing increased isolation and the negative impacts associated with this.

Aberdeenshire Council announced these cuts without prior consultation and although we understand the budgets are tight, we believe that the social, environmental and economic impacts of these cuts will far outweigh any saving that might be made in the short-term.

Finally, these short-sighted cuts to bus routes are at odds with priorities outlined within the Aberdeenshire Council Plan. Our communities were consulted to inform these priorities and the council will fail in the outlined aims to:

"Have the best possible transport across communities; reducing poverty and inequalities and their pledge to tackle climate change"

As such they need to be held accountable for their short-sighted and unbelievably damaging actions.

We will not stand for the ruthless tearing down of our public services that disproportionately affect rural communities in Aberdeenshire. We disavow the council's actions in this area and will not tolerate cuts that will leave us even more isolated and disconnected than we already are. We demand these decisions be reversed with immediate effect.