When a lifeline bus route was axed in Avonmouth, the local community stepped in
“Avonmouth is a place that often feels completely cut off,” says Rachel Haig. She should know, as she runs the community centre that sits on the high street and acts as a hub for everyone from preschoolers to people with dementia.
When I arrive to meet her, toddler lunch Tuesday is well underway with mums and their kids tucking into the classic combination of chicken nuggets and macaroni cheese. To allow Rachel to finish off her plate, her colleague Sammi, the charity’s administrator, gives me an enthusiastic tour of the converted school building that Avonmouth Community Centre Association calls home: the library, the main hall events space, the sunlit garden with therapeutic vegetable patches.
The village, where the community centre can be found alongside the local church, park and high street, feels something of an oasis enclosed by the towers and traffic of Avonmouth’s industry. It’s not hard to see why local residents in the northern suburb can feel isolated, surrounded as they are by heavy vehicles, looming factories and industrial fumes.
So, unsurprisingly, it felt like a real blow when First Bus announced in April 2024 that it was axing the number 3 route linking Avonmouth to Lawrence Weston and the city. Without so much as a consultation, residents could no longer access their nearest supermarket, a large nearby secondary school or Cribbs Causeway without taking multiple buses, while it became more difficult for those coming into Avonmouth to get to work or access the North Bristol Foodbank.
“I suspect what happened was that somebody who doesn’t know Bristol sat in a room somewhere and said, ‘Ooh, wouldn’t it be lovely to have a bus route that just went from here all the way over to the other side of the city?’” says Rachel, gesturing to an imaginary map and a route that bypasses Avonmouth entirely. “‘Why is it going all round there? That’s just industry, there’s no people.’”
How a small local charity got behind the wheel
When the number 3 disappeared from timetables, it was down to the community organisation led by Rachel Haig to try and fill the gap. It was far from an easy process, and brought into sharp relief the issue of private companies providing vital public services.
Who set up a contract with the bus company that allows them to just do whatever they like?
Rachel Haig
Rachel started by contacting her local councillors and MP for Bristol North West Darren Jones, as well as the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) office headed up by metro mayor Dan Norris. “But all the main players seemed to say, there’s nothing we can do about it,” she says.
“Part of me says, as a local citizen, how can you not have any influence?” she asks with a rising note of anger in her voice. “Who set up a contract with the bus company that allows them to just do whatever they like?”
It just so happened that there were a few weeks to apply for a pot of WECA funding through a £2m scheme called WestLOCAL which helps communities set up their own bus service. But the burden of putting together the bid was too much for the small community association, while having the funding sitting in their account could have all but excluded them from accessing grants for other key work.
At that point, local businesses stepped in. SevernNet, a social enterprise bringing organisations in the area together, took the reins while the local school, GP surgery, foodbank and church all contributed information to the bid.
It was successful, and since September, the Big Lemon Community Interest Company (CIC) has operated the number 40 bus service, which can be seen almost hourly during the week as part of an 18-month trial. It’s also tailored to the community’s needs, bringing school kids to Long Cross in Lawrence Weston and back home to Avonmouth.
“It’s been great,” Rachel says hesitantly, clearly determined to celebrate the win even though the service is not a like-for-like replacement. “But there’s that sense of loss and there’s something else for me, a sense of [injustice] really,” she says. “No-one else in the city has to worry about whether or not their buses are going down the road. Here we are in Avonmouth, suddenly we’ve got to provide our own structure in order to get people the transport that they need.”
Private profits on public services
Tom Blenkinsop, who was elected as local Labour councillor for Lawrence Weston and Avonmouth in spring 2024, recalls the cost to the local community of losing the number 3. “I remember one person who had a lot of care responsibilities and she was really upset because that was a lifeline for her,” he says. “It gave her a very small glimmer of free time when she could take the person she was caring for over to Avonmouth community centre. She could get some time for herself. And that was ripped away.”
Tom came in as councillor as the number 3 was cut, finding himself in a bizarre situation where the two halves of his ward were unable to reach each other by public transport. “It was a problem of people and communities being ignored,” he says, noting the knock-on effects for residents in Lawrence Weston, Brentry and Henbury.
For him, the campaign for the number 40 is a success story in local cooperation. “It’s an excellent example of how communities can inform something, of how community organisations and the council and WECA can work together.”
However, Dan Norris’s tenure as WECA mayor has drawn criticism on the subject of transport, especially for the birthday bus pass scheme which critics called a “gimmick”. Alongside the issue of ‘ghost’ buses that are timetabled but never appear, Bristol has seen local services cut even amid an expansion in population. It has forced certain areas, such as in the south of the city, to rely on expensive taxis or demand-based services, even though elderly passengers rarely engage with the mobile apps needed to use them.
Despite the fact that communities keenly feel the loss of axed services, local government seems fairly powerless in the face of the private sector. I struggle to believe Rachel when she tells me the number 40 isn’t allowed to go to Cribbs Causeway because it would be competing with a First Bus route between Henbury and the mall.
But change may be around the corner. The Labour government is bringing in legislation that will give local authorities control over routes and fares, either by establishing their own bus companies or by working alongside private operators. Meanwhile, the West of England Combined Authority, which has faced criticism for its slowness in exploring the options, will spend £500,000 on an external feasibility study into bus franchising, with results expected in 2025/26.
The study may well look to Greater Manchester, which in September 2023 set up the Bee network. It unites buses and trams as well as cycling and walking routes in an integrated system similar to Transport for London’s, with commuter rail expected to be added in 2028.
Axes hanging over local infrastructure
Data is being collated about how the bus service is used, but to survive beyond April 2026 it needs to become financially sustainable. Six months down the road, Rachel Haig doubts it has reached the required level of popularity, whereas Tom Blenkinsop is more hopeful.
When I chat to Clive, one of the Big Lemon drivers, he feels there is still some confusion about the service. He still fields questions from people about where the bus goes, but many do seem interested in using it when they find out.
I ask if he knows about the number 3 that the bus was brought in to replace. “Somebody told me about it just this morning,” he says. “He said to me that was a big loss, because there’s a community down in Avonmouth that really relied on that bus and they can’t get it now.”
When he politely tells me time’s up, I jump off to let him pull away down the high street. The bus is completely empty. It feels as if the 40 might need to make more of a name for itself before it can become a permanent fixture in the area.
And while that battle is ongoing, the next battleground may be Avonmouth’s library. Tom and Rachel both volunteer their anger at the council’s plans to review Bristol’s library services due to budget deficits. The announcement cited that Avonmouth library receives just 3,000 visitors annually, compared to the 70,000 who visit Henleaze, despite the clear disparity in wealth and access to other libraries between the two areas. For both of them, it represents another axe hanging over one of Avonmouth’s few community assets.
But Tom does believe the grit that won Avonmouth its number 40 bus could help it keep its library. The people are tenacious, he says. “They have to be. And there is a strong community spirit. And we’ve seen the results.”
