Whitwick: Campaigners call for restoration of axed bus stops

Jacky McNeice said the changes had left her with a 25-minute walk to the nearest bus stop

A campaign has been launched to try to get axed bus routes restored through the centre of a Leicestershire village.

Bus operator Arriva stopped running three of its services through the middle of Whitwick, near Coalville, in 2022 and removed a number of long-standing bus stops.

Villagers have now started a petition to try to convince the company to rethink its decision.

Arriva said the changes were to improve the reliability of the services.

The changes saw the 29 and 29a services, between Coalville and Leicester, and the number 16, from Coalville to Leicester, rerouted away from Market Place and North Street to roads on the edge of the village.

'Disrupted their lives'

Jacky McNeice, 67, one of the lead campaigners, started a petition over the issue, which has been signed by more than 1,200 people.

She said: "I'm registered blind, severely sighted and I can't drive so I depend on the bus if I want to get to Leicester, to the Leicester Royal Infirmary, for example.

"Now if I want to take the bus I have to walk more than a mile to get to the nearest bus stop and can take 25 minutes.

"So many people in the village feel isolated because of this. A lot of people have just given up going anywhere. It's not just inconvenient for people, it's severely disrupted their lives."

Councillors have urged Arriva to rethink the service cuts

Ms McNeice said the petition would also be presented to Leicestershire County Council in the hope it could subsidise the restoration of the former route.

Whitwick's county councillor Tony Gillard said: "We've being trying to get Arriva to rethink this for more than a year.

"They said it was a commercial decision which would improve passenger times - but now they are not taking many passengers where they want to go.

"There's no rhyme or reason so we've got a petition together to put some pressure on."

A spokesperson for Arriva Midlands said: "These routes were changed to improve reliability of the service as a whole and we took into account how well-used the bus stops were.

"For us to change them means that not enough customers were using those bus stops."

The firm said its 16 service still stopped about 350m from Whitwick health centre.

A county council spokesperson said: "Although we work closely with bus operators across the passenger transport network, these routes were not financially supported by the county council, and it was a commercial decision taken by Arriva back in 2022 to re-route services in the Whitwick area."