Tag: travel

Get on the Magic Bus

James Piers Taylor1 Comment

Today was supposed to be day one of the new 45 bus service on the Dengie. This would replace the D4 and Dart 5 with a much-reduced timetable combining those two buses. The scheduled services would be reduced to two a day in either direction, Monday to Friday, with the Saturday service lost entirely. The Dengie Hundred Bus Users Group (DHBUG) had intervened to tweak the timetable in Essex County Council [ECC]’s tender as the original proposal gave little time at the route’s destination before returning. As many users depended on the bus to do their weekly shop they would have found themselves with less than an hour to do so. At the DHBUG AGM on 7 June, many attendees were furious about the changes and reduction in service – but ECC didn’t send anyone to the meeting and Arrow Taxis who had won the tender sent a message saying that it wasn’t worth them coming as they didn’t know anything about what was going on past what had been published already.

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Bursou Two

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In the previous post, I mentioned that the Slow Ways route Bursou One is one of three footpath-orientated ways between Burnham and Southminster. I committed to adding my preferred walking route between the two as an additional Slow Way. It’s now been added as Bursou Two. Below, I have appended my route description from the site, plus a review of walking it on Sunday 17th March.

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Zeroing In

James Piers Taylor1 Comment

I am grateful to Tony Fittock (District Councillor for Althorne ) for letting me know that the process of creating a new Local Development Plan for Maldon District has begun. So my previous post on the matter revealed my own ignorance of the Maldon District Local Development Plan (LDP) Review: Issues and Options Consultation, which ran from 17 January to 14 March 2022.

Mr Fittock also shared a link to the report ‘Growth Options for the Review of the Local Development Plan’ [p.33 onwards] provided to the meeting of Maldon District councillors on 14 September 2023.

From this, I learned that ‘the Plan Period for the review of the LDP Review is going to be 20 years.’ As the current plan runs until 2029, this indicates that its successor will cover the period up to 2050. As noted previously, the UK government is committed by law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 100% of 1990 levels (net zero) by 2050. The next Local Development Plan will therefore set out a vision and a framework for the future development of Maldon District that must include complete decarbonisation.

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