A half-hourly bus service around Blandford which was paid for by Lidl when the company was given planning permission for its out-of-town supermarket three years ago is due to be withdrawn.

The service averaged only 48 single journeys a day, and half that number since the covid pandemic restricted usage and is set to end on Saturday, February 13. The ‘Lidl bus’ was provided with a subsidy of more than £250,000 as a condition of approval for the building of the supermarket in Shaftesbury Lane.

The contract for the service with Morebus expired on December 31, and Morebus have advised that they are unable to continue running it without funding.
It has run half-hourly on the same route around the town but in the opposite direction to the hour X8 return service to Poole, frequently within minutes of each other.

Town clerk Linda Scott Giles told town councillors at their meeting in December that she had asked for more information on costs and numbers using the service. Members agreed that the £91k pa provided by Lidl was beyond their means. Councillor Steve Hitchings said engaging with a different supplier might have reduced costs, but the service level agreement was drawn up with Morebus.

Councillor Byron Quayle said: “The service could have been so much better. “It was always going to struggle for the numbers and obvious that it wouldn’t be viable just going round the town. It is very frustrating that we are now exactly where we thought we would be.

Both he and his fellow county councillor Nocturin Lacey Clarke and the Blandford Town Team challenged the wisdom of the service when it was introduced, and Town Team chairman Nic Nicol said: “The expiry of the X8A sees the end of an inflexible Service Level Agreement, and an invariably empty bus service. The aspiration for less traffic in the town centre was a top priority in the responses to the recent Town Centre Recovery Survey, and the overriding priority for Blandford and the long held view of town councillors and Town Team members alike is for a traffic plan that removes the requirement for vehicles to pass through the town centre to get to the north of the town, and key locations like the Community Hospital and the Blandford Group Practice. Bus services are important as an essential part of transport policy, to reduce town centre traffic congestion and motor vehicle pollution which is hugely detrimental to the health of young people in particular.”

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