Residents are never shy to voice opinions on Kent’s bus services which have taken a hit in recent years. Operators face huge struggles with soaring running costs and passenger numbers not having recovered from the pandemic.

Will devolved local government in Kent, which could see funding come down from Westminster in chunks to a mayoralty and new unitary authorities, make a difference? Simon Finlay reports…

A gusting wind threatens to carry in another burst of heavy rain as eight miserable looking souls, all wrapped up, shiver in the bus shelter.

Their faces say everything - resigned but grimly defiant.

Clearly, they have to be somewhere because no one would be here by choice.

But at least Monday's Nu-Venture number 70 bus at Borough Green railway station is on time at 10am, offering a dry refuge from the sodden gloom.

It would be passengers' carriage to Tesco down the road or to an appointment.

This is one of two weekly round-trips - the other on Friday - paid for out of parish council funds and the odd grant.

It might not be much, but it is better than nothing. Because ‘nothing’ is the alternative.

Mike Taylor, 79, was one of the architects to get the project moving.

The retired haulier says plainly: "If it wasn't for these services there would be no buses from here. Nothing.

"It gets people out of the house and it can be quite a social occasion. So it's important."

With a smirk he adds, a little mischievously: "A Darby and Joan Club on wheels, if you like."

Monday's number 70 and Friday's number 58 have been run for nearly two years on a route long considered uneconomic.

Mr Taylor, chairman of Borough Green Parish Council, said "We got together with all the other parishes and agreed we could fund it with some help from Kent County Council (KCC) bus service improvement grants."

Each of the 12 contributing parishes donates a sum determined by their population.

The buses cost £10,000 a year to run, albeit on a relatively small number of passengers. Nu-Venture boss Norman Kemp, who estimates a full time service would carry a heavy loss-making price tag of nearer £200,000.

"We can't provide that service," says the 72-year-old Scot, "but we can provide a lifeline."

Nu-Venture is a local company that started out as a coach company half a century ago but moved into bus services in the 1980s and whilst it is a business driven by its own economic imperatives, Mr Kemp does feel a sense of community duty tempered by cold, commercial reality.

Bus consultant to Nu-Venture, Tony Francis, once a transport boss at KCC, said he was “amazed” at how much funding was available when he went looking for it.

“There is money there and you have to go and find it - whether it is the district, borough, county or parish councils. Sometimes there are other groups who you can send the collection box to,” he explains.

This is the reality of trying to keep some further flung parts and their residents - many of whom are old and have no other alternative transport - connected to the places they have to get to.

Over on the Isle of Sheppey, 91-year-old Slyvia Gell is getting ready to go out. She catches the Chalkwell service into Sheerness for her regular trip to Tesco.

She has been a widow since husband John died in 2009 after suffering from Parkinson's Disease for some years, and the buses are her connection to the outside world. There are pictures of him everywhere.

"I do miss him," she reflects quietly. "We got together in 1950 and were married for 57 years. Did everything together, always talking."

She may be sharp as a tack, but Sylvia's health is not so good. Eight years of breathing in dust particles in a shirt factory has left the mother of two suffering from an aggressive lung disease, she says.

Nevertheless, she is absolutely determined to keep going on her trips to Tesco for as long as she is able.

"We don't have as many buses as we used to, which is a shame. I get the 9.45 in the morning and order a cab to pick me up because of all the bags.

"I do struggle these days but I still do my washing and cleaning and try to keep the place neat and tidy."

She is one of a number of older people who are asking serious questions about why bus services are not better and warn how their loss leaves them at risk of isolation or, worse, being forgotten.

She wrote to Chalkwell pointing out her concerns and received a polite and detailed reply from the managing director, Roland Eglinton, but the situation is unlikely to change.

On a Baltic morning in Folkestone, the station at Middelburg Square appears as much as a cut-through from one part of town to another as a place to wait for a bus.

None of the users have much good to say about their experiences with Stagecoach.

Keith Sansum, who moved from Dover to Hythe because of the bus service to Folkestone but they are being scaled back.

The former rail worker and police PCSO officer, now aged 69, said: "Now it's rubbish. Awful. People need a reliable service."

Bowling round the corner is a friend, well-known man about town, Bob Mouland, 76, who does not mince his words as he dashes to board his bus: "They don't run on time and they are filthy. The trouble is there is no competition here to Stagecoach, so they do what they like.

"If there was competition, they'd soon change."

Therein seems to lie part of the problem - it appears there is not enough demand to warrant a competitive environment.

What irks critics is that public money - much of it from Kent County Council - is being paid to a private company to keep a service going, although sometimes at a reduced level which runs neither at weekends nor bank holidays.

On top of that, says Irishman Sean Spillane, a 74-year-old who moved to the town in retirement five years ago, the service is unreliable.

He left Waterford in his youth for a job in the Vauxhall car plant in Luton and the subject of Irish rugby is the only topic that will divert him from his bugbear, Stagecoach.

His "axed" bus service means he cannot easily get from East Cliff to where he needs to go.

In the absence of a nearby bus stop or train stations, simple journeys to the surgery or the shops would cost at least £6 each way.

Mr Spillane now runs his Save Our Buses (Kent) campaign, offering bus users a forum to share their public transport experiences.

Last year, all local councils paying for transport were asked to revise and update their Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) which KCC completed by June.

By November KCC learnt its BSIP allocation for 2025/26 along with its allocation of Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) funding for the same period, totalling £23,134,379. It sounds like a fortune but it only goes so far.

A little earlier, a £955m package was announced by the then transport secretary of state, Louise Haigh.

She said: “This is part of our wider plan to put passengers first and give every community the power to take back control of their bus services through franchising or public ownership.

"By delivering better buses, we’ll ensure people have proper access to jobs and opportunities – powering economic growth in every corner of the country.”

Kent's £23m goes on "supporting" bus services. Others call them subsidies but the highways chief at KCC, Cllr Neil Baker, contends the cash mostly goes to pay for school routes.

All of this sounds hollow to passengers, particularly older ones, who claim their services have been reduced or cut.

Cllr Baker does understand the seemingly anomalous position where public money is given to private companies to run transport services.

He adds: "It is concerning people might find themselves cut off because the bus has been cut.

"Equally, bus companies are not going to be running buses that are losing money. Plus the service has to work for the passenger.

"It's not much use if the only bus you take somewhere has the return journey half an hour later. Nor if the return is 12 hours later."

But he does see hope on the horizon, when devolution comes to Kent.

The transport system could come under the umbrella of the government's much-trumped mayoral system, says Cllr Baker.

He contends: "We can't allow the bus network to continue to collapse. I think that at some point devolution, either in itself or by the government building on its public transport policies, will be turning on the taps when it comes to funding for the buses.

"What I do not want to see in Kent is the bus networks getting so reduced we will have nothing to build back from.

"It's absolutely crucial we retain the networks we do have and build from there. On devolution, I am happy to take the government on their word about what they are trying to do.

"I think that devolution could unlock lots of the current logjams in the system but the big thing in the future is funding. It's going to be difficult without some subsidies or without seed funding in some places to really transform our public transport network.

"Devolution does that in the immediate term by having a mayor right at the top table being able to bang the drum for these improvements but if you are to move rather quickly to an established mayoral authority, then funding comes almost in one big block and then you decide how best to spend it in Kent."

Cllr Baker sees franchising services "under one badge" which can guarantee services which are viable and could benefit the travelling public.

Norman Kemp is willing to keep an open mind about devolution and is broadly supportive of central government’s commitment to public transport.

“There is considerable funding for investment for the short term, at least, between 2026 and 2029,” he says.

But what does concern Mr Kemp is the school transport Kent Travel Saver which is currently a non-statutory KCC spend.

He adds: “It’s one of the questions surrounding devolution because it is discretionary spending and it could disappear.

“But during the life of this parliament, we know the course the bus industry is set on and therefore we can plan ahead sufficiently to make sure one of our older folk in Borough Green has her service to the shops once a week or the kids can get to school.”

In recent years, some subsidies were removed from dozens of services in Kent.

Mr Kemp adds: “Look, we didn’t want to leave our passengers high and dry and they are delighted to have something but disappointed not to have the all week service.

“So the services continue and while they are not hugely supported by the numbers, they are a lifeline and that shouldn’t change.”

Stagecoach does not shy away from the fact it receives support from the public purse to run services for older people and school children.

All bus operators complain about the cost of running the vehicles and in Kent, unexpected road works can make services unreliable and slower.

Stagecoach South East's managing director Joel Mitchell says: "The cost of running buses has increased by over 25% in the last two years and is set to rise further when the hike in employers' national insurance takes effect from April.

“Our costs include such things as pay for our people, the cost of fuel and maintenance, and all the various overheads associated with providing the support and facilities we need to keep services running.

“Roadworks and traffic congestion have a big impact on our costs too. As a rule of thumb, for every hour a bus spent on the road ten years ago, we now need an extra ten minutes to cover the same distance. When you factor in the extra running-time, pay, fuel and maintenance – the effect this has on costs is significant.”

Mr Mitchell says that passenger numbers are still 15% behind pre-Covid levels and concessionary pass use is down by 25% since 2020.

He adds: “This combination of rising costs and fewer passengers means that sadly we have had to face some tough decisions about loss-making services.

“But where we have had to reduce the services we offer, we've been ready to work in partnership with local government to help bring about solutions.”

Mr Kemp offers his own assessment: “To distil my job, it is to provide the most reliable service to the to the widest possible community because we are not going to going to exist as a business if we keep on shrinking - that is either shrinking the the routes or losing our passengers.”