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November 2016

Campaigning for better public transport and safer streets in Epping Forest.
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Our next meeting

Weds 16th November, 7.30pm, The Space, Loughton Library, IG10 1HD

Our monthly organising meeting, open to anybody who has an interest in improving Epping Forest’s public transport and making our streets safer.

Since the last meeting:

  • We’ve started our response to the Epping Forest Cycling Action Plan
  • Eleanor Laing MP has taken on the parking problems in Theydon Bois
  • Clause 21 (the anti-publicly owned bus companies clause) has been dropped from the Bus Services Bill
  • Public consultation has started on the Local Plan

Please come along to talk about these and any other public transport and safer streets issues you’d like to raise.

Bus Services Bill

 There have been several major amendments to the Bus Services Bill in the House of Lords, including:

  • The anti-public ownership Clause 21 was dropped, meaning that local authorities should now be able to set up their own bus companies.
  • An amendment allowing all local authorities, not just combined mayoral authorities, to implement the franchising proposals in the bill was passed.

These are both important changes but could be overturned when the Bill moves to the House of Commons for debate.

The final House of Lords debate before the Bill moves to the House of Commons is on Wednesday 23rd November.

The Report Stage meetings totalled about seven hours but we’ve put links to debates around individual issues on our website. It’s worth watching one or two as they give a lot of background:

Bus Services Bill 2016
New figures reveal councils have been forced to reduce bus services by more than 12 per cent in the last year alone –  leaving thousands of people, many of them in rural communities, isolated.

Read more on the Local Government Association website here: Bus Services

Public transport and employment survey
We ran a quick Twitter poll a week or so ago – 83% of respondents said that public transport had affected the jobs they could take: Twitter poll

That was a very unscientific poll but the main survey is still live on our website. Please complete it if you haven’t already and spread the word: eftag.org.uk/emp2016

Bus for Mrs Laing!


The Campaign for Better Transport have started a campaign to take MPs on buses, to remind MPs of the importance of decent bus services.

Our MP, Eleanor Laing, has helped to deal with the parking problems in Theydon Bois but she didn’t mention that one way to alleviate parking is to provide alternatives – better public transport and safer streets. This would be a great opportunity to make that point, particularly in light of our survey results which show that poor bus services affect jobs.

We’ll discuss this on Wednesday but in the meantime there’s more information on the Campaign for Better Transport’s site here: Take your MP on a bus!
Thanks to Roding Cycling Hub for officially endorsing EFTAG.

Roding Cycling Hub