Local Transport: Planning Developments

Roz Savage Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) for her very insightful opening speech.

If the number of homes in an area is doubled but the roads, buses, rail capacity, flood protection and sewerage are not doubled, something has to give. In Siddington, in my constituency, we are being asked to absorb up to 1,100 additional homes on top of the 2,500 already under way nearby, with no credible, guaranteed transport plan to support them. That is not infrastructure-led growth; it is infrastructure playing catch-up, and rural communities are the ones that will pay the price.

In a previous career as a management consultant, I learned through critical path planning that certain things must happen in a specific order to work smoothly; that just does not seem to be happening at the moment. In a perfect world—I know we do not live in one—the land use framework would have come out first so we could see how to allocate our land. I understand that if we add together all the land area commitments in this country, we will need a couple more Waleses to accommodate them all. Clearly, something has gone a little awry.

To pick up on a point already made by a couple of colleagues: will housing targets actually deliver the affordable houses we need, where we need them? I am not at all convinced. As an environmentalist, I am very concerned by measures in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Are we at risk of trashing our countryside and building houses that are not fit for their designated purpose? Of course, we do not yet have the sewerage infrastructure; as a constituency that lies largely in the Thames Water catchment, this is very much top of my mind.

[Mr Bedford]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the utility sector should be a statutory consultee? In a previous life, I worked for a utility company. One of the frustrations for that company was that it was often asked to provide infrastructure to support massive housing developments, yet there was no requirement for it to be consulted as part of the planning process. Does she agree that is wrong?

[Dr Savage]

I believe we need to challenge the automatic right for developers to connect to the sewerage network. In fact, they must be encouraged to work with public utilities to ensure that capacity is there before they put spades in the ground.

I realise I am slightly digressing from the key issue of transport, which I will come to now. Siddington’s road network consists of narrow rural lanes that were never designed for high traffic volumes. High congestion already exists at peak times, especially around Ashton Road and the routes feeding the A419 and A429 corridors. Some 1,000 homes could mean another 1,500 or even 2,000 vehicles, with a significant increase in daily car movements. If the potholes are bad now, they are only going to get worse—not to mention the impact on carbon emissions and air quality.

Instead, we should be encouraging public transport and active travel, and designing new developments accordingly. I have heard recently from town councils in Cricklade and Fairford of their concerns about these large, bolt-on estates that are a little too far from town centre facilities. People will have to drive, adding to existing congestion and pressure on parking spaces.

Rural bus services are already limited in frequency and coverage. On the 51 route, the loss of the 8 am service and the 4 pm return means that it is just not a viable way to get to work and back. The result is being locked into increased car use. A young constituent of mine, Heather Kent, attends Stagedoor Learning in Cheltenham, but she now faces an 11-hour day with long waits between services or is dependent on her parents to collect her. She first came to my attention as someone who regularly does litter picks in the area; she will now be spending more time trying to get to and from places and less time picking up litter.

Meanwhile, on the 77 bus route from Fairford to Cirencester, there have been service changes and serious reliability concerns. Once somebody gives up on reliable public transport and buys a car, we have lost them; they will then use their car to get everywhere, with all the consequences of that. What we need is not just a short-term promise of viable public transport; we need it to be locked in for the long term—not dependent on developer payments—so people can plan their lives accordingly.

Going forward, as has already been mentioned, the impacts will be not just linear but exponential. We need careful, sensible modelling of what the impact of these new developments will be, and the resulting total vehicle movement. I want to emphasise that I am not opposed to housing. Clearly, we need more affordable housing, but I echo the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo), about having not only developer-led housing for profit but the right kinds of housing in the right places with an in-built sense of community.

Without careful planning, we will face permanent congestion, reduced safety, worsened flooding, a loss of village identity and potentially serious adverse impacts on nature and wellbeing. Planning should shape the future; it should not erode the present. If we allow large-scale developments to proceed without guaranteed transport infrastructure, we will be building not thriving communities but daily frustration, longer commutes, gridlocked lanes and an increased flood risk. Growth done well creates opportunity; growth done badly creates regret and resentment.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Roz Savage Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 10th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew]

The hon. Member is quite right, of course. I am not suggesting that bus services should be only for profit. He will know that Essex county council has an enhanced partnership agreement; it has a relationship with for-profit providers, but has negotiated that it will pay extra for social journeys. He will also note that Essex has had more growth in its passenger numbers than any of the franchise operations. In particular, it has had more passenger growth than the Bee Network in Greater Manchester, the organisation that the Bill largely seeks to replicate.

The Bill has a deep suspicion of the profit motive and focuses on process, ignoring what the real purpose of the legislation should be. The House of Lords identified this lacuna in the drafting, and rectified it with a purpose clause, which was clause 1 when the Bill was considered in Committee. It said that the Act should

“improve the performance, accessibility and quality of bus passenger services in Great Britain.”

That is not a particularly high bar, or particularly onerous, because the Secretary of State merely had to have regard to those objectives. I would not have thought that was particularly challenging for the Government. However, it was too much for them, and they removed that purpose clause in Committee. New clause 34, which is in my name and that of the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden), seeks to reinstate that very reasonable clause. It would ensure that when we discuss the improvement of bus services, at the front and centre of our minds are the performance, accessibility and quality of bus services, so that we put the passenger first.

This Bill, despite the explanations given by the Minister a moment ago, remains weak on protections for the disabled, the partially sighted and the blind. That was a huge concern in Committee. There has been a lot of concern about this in the disabled community—concern particularly focused on floating bus stops, and bus stops with shared use borders. I note that the Minister said that he is looking at having guidance notes on design, and that there should be a campaign to remind cyclists in particular of the highway code. I do not think that is good enough. I do not think a design tweak could be made to a floating bus stop that would provide partially sighted and blind users with the security that they richly deserve when using bus services. An educational campaign to remind cyclists of their duties under the highway code would not do any harm, and I suggest that the Government do it, but it would not be the solution in its own right. We have had warm words from the Minister, both in Committee and today, but we need action. New clause 28 would give the Government six months to prepare proposals to prohibit the creation of new floating bus stops. The Government appear to be deaf to the blind, and not prepared to take effective action on this point.

The Government are also being weak on protections for bus passengers more generally. We want legislation that puts bus users first, both as regards accessibility, which I have mentioned, and protection against antisocial behaviour. We are not asking much—we are just asking that the legislation afford bus users the same protections that rail passengers benefit from. The Government have an opportunity to support those objectives, and I hope that the Minister will acknowledge that that is the direction that they should take.

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for drawing attention to the need to provide for disabled bus users. My amendment would require local authorities seeking a franchise to take people with special educational needs into account, and to consult them and the groups that represent them. Does he agree with that proposal?

[Jerome Mayhew]

The hon. Lady will know, from reading the Hansard of Committee proceedings, what time and effort the official Opposition put into supporting the aspiration to have increased accessibility across disability and special educational needs, so I am very supportive in principle of her amendment’s aims.

I have addressed accessibility, but what about pricing and increasing bus usage? We know from our experience of operating bus services over the past decade that price is one of the biggest factors affecting patronage. In the previous Administration, the Conservatives put forward a £2 bus fare cap, and it was enormously successful. Apart from anything else, it was hugely popular, but it also aided the recovery from covid, and in getting people back out and about. It was particularly useful for younger passengers; it helped to build their confidence and get them back on the road to recovery. In the run-up to the last election, the continuation of the £2 bus fare cap for the duration of this Parliament was a Conservative manifesto commitment. What was Labour’s response to that? Its first act on coming into power was to put the price up by 50%, from £2 to £3. To accompany that, there was a perverse claim that that was actually a price cut. One does not need to be an economist at the Bank of England, or even from the accounts department, to work that one out. Experience of customer complaints would be enough to enable a person to see that a price rise from £2 to £3 is exactly that: a rise, not a cut.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Roz Savage Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kohler]

Those are exactly the kinds of issues that must be addressed, and this Bill does not do enough to achieve that. I will come back to that in a moment.

In rural areas, the story is often one of total disconnection, with communities cut off and people unable to get to work or hospital appointments, or to visit friends or relations.

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in rural constituencies like mine, bus routes are an absolute lifeline and a route out of poverty? When the 84 and 85 bus route was cut last year, it meant not only that people could not get to medical appointments or to work, but that students had to drop out of the college courses that would have enabled them to escape from poverty. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to make sure that this Bill enables an affordable, joined-up and genuinely useful rural transport network?

[Mr Kohler]

I completely agree. The point is that this is about not only getting people out of poverty but growing the economy. People need access to bus routes; otherwise they are left with expensive and much more environmentally damaging private transport.

Put simply, a poor or non-existent bus service is not just an inconvenience. It is a barrier to opportunity, a brake on economic growth, and an obstacle to achieving net zero. Given the decline in local bus services under the Conservatives, my party and I warmly welcome the Government’s renewed focus on this issue. The Bill includes measures that are long overdue and that my party will support.