Written evidence from P Taylor (BUS 113)
I have lived for 41 years in Elwick Village, about
four miles west of Hartlepool. I have eyesight problems and have
never driven. For the first 10 years, until my wife learned to
drive and we purchased a car, we and our two daughters relied
entirely on public transport to get to and from the village. This
was sometimes inconvenient, but it was a price we were prepared
to pay to live in an attractive village which was - and is - a
socially mixed community rather than a single class suburb.
In recent years there has been much talk in political
circles of localism and the "big society", but the counterpoint
to this as far as our village is concerned has been a sustained
attack from various quarters on our independence, and even our
viability. The village community has organized to help fight off
attempts by the Post Office to close the village office and by
the Borough Council to close the village school; it is likely
soon to have to fight to retain a village Rector against amalgamation
attempts by the Church Commissioners, and to maintain representation
on Hartlepool Borough Council against changes proposed by the
Boundary Commission. You will excuse us for feeling cynical in
face of the rhetoric of politicians.
Against this background, the loss of the village
bus link is damaging blow. It saddens me that families like ours
was when we moved here, will no longer be able to choose to live
in Elwick, and that, deprived of its transport link, the village
will pitch further towards being just another middle class dormitory
; a vibrant village community will be lost. On a personal level,
my wife and I are both over 70. We have no wish to leave the village,
but can foresee a time when for us, as is already the case for
a number of elderly residents, it will just be too difficult to
continue to live here in consequence of the lack of public transport
and other service cuts. In bringing about the removal of the public
transport link, the Borough Council is making it difficult, if
not impossible, for a proportion of its residents to access those
remaining public services to whose upkeep they contribute in paying
one of the highest Council Taxes in the country.
April 2011
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