Victory as bus shuttle between Burnley General and Royal Blackburn Hospitals saved from the axe
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Residents were told earlier this month that the East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (ELHT) had planned to scrap a free daily bus service running between Royal Blackburn, Burnley General, and Pendle Community Hospitals. The service was due to end from Monday, March 31st, as the Trust cannot afford the annual operation costs of £780,000 and is around £32m. overspent.
The Burnley Express teamed up with the town's MP Oliver Ryan to help find a solution to the impending loss of the hospital shuttle bus. Meanwhile, local and county councillors, including Coun. Gordon Birtwistle, County Couns Usman Arif, Azhar Ali, and Mohammed Iqbal, and the leader of Burnley Council Afrasiab Anwar also joined forces to help resolve the issue, and nearly 15,500 people signed a community petition to save the service.
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Hide AdFollowing public protest, a new operator has stepped in to continue to run it indefinitely from Tuesday, April 1st, as a commercial service. Moving People Bus and Coach Services, which is based in Oswaldtwistle, has submitted papers to formally register the route between Royal Blackburn Teaching Hospital and Burnley General Teaching Hospital. It means that staff, visitors, and patients, particularly those most in need, can still travel to the hospitals.


The new route, supported by Blackburn with Darwen Council and Lancashire County Council, will remain a direct service between the two hospitals but will include stops in both Blackburn and Burnley town centres to improve travel for passengers but does not include Pendle hospital. It will start around 6am and include regular routes throughout the day, until about 8-30pm. It will initially run between Monday and Friday, with a review once operational to consider an expansion over the weekend.
Speaking about the victory, Burnley, Padiham, and Brierfield MP Oliver Ryan said: “This is a brilliant outcome for people power and all of the passengers who use the shuttle bus service to travel between hospitals for health care to visit friends and family or to get to work across the Trust. The public reaction was immediate and very clear – people value this service and were prepared to fight for it.
“I have done everything possible to work with colleagues to find a transport operator to pick up this route and it’s great that this has been delivered so quickly to ensure there is no disruption to existing travel arrangements and passengers can continue to get to where they need to go.
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“I’d like to thank Moving People for stepping forward and to encourage everyone who fought for the shuttle bus to continue to use it and ensure it’s viable for them to operate for a very long time.”
Following reports earlier this month that the service would be cut, hundreds of readers took to social media to express their fears for the elderly and people on low income who might otherwise struggle to travel to hospital.
Glen Chamberlain, managing director of Moving People, said: “This will be a commercial service with a charge in place for passengers and run independently and without subsidy from the hospital trust. It is clear from data provided from the existing service that patients, visitors and staff rely upon it and, as a local company, I am delighted we have been able to step in and pick up the route.
“In the coming weeks we will be sharing the exact stops and timetable and I want to urge people who are currently using the bus to continue using it. We do need to make this commercially viable
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for Moving People and the people of East Lancashire and protect the service for the future.”
Coun. Scott Smith, lead member for Highways and Active Travel at Lancashire County Council, said: “I am very pleased that a way has been found to save this vital service for patients, visitors and
staff at the hospitals.
“Following the decision by the hospital trust much work has taken place behind the scenes to ensure a solution could be found and I would like to thank all those involved, particularly Moving People,


who have stepped in to run this as a commercial venture.
“It is also good that thanks to the extra stops being made available in Blackburn and Burnley town centres this service will ensure even more people can use this service to access the hospitals.”
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