FoxConnect expands in Leicestershire

Saturday 18th January 2025

Leicestershire County Council introduced a raft of changes to its subsidised bus network in the Melton Mowbray area from 5th January including major renumbering of bus routes and a new DRT scheme which joins its original FoxConnect branded scheme introduced in August 2022 in the south west of the county which had funding from the DfT’s Rural Mobility Fund and I sampled soon after introduction.

This latest scheme is being funded as part of the county’s Bus Service Improvement Plan and comprises two geographic zones: one towards Syston to the south west of Melton Mowbray and another split zone north east of the town famed for its pork pies.

Regular blog readers may recall I featured a bus journey between Melton Mowbray and Syston last May as part of my Every Route 100 blog series and sadly, as a result of these changes, that route is no more…

… being subsumed into a newly numbered, four journeys a day, route LC1 and diverted to run between Melton Mowbray and Oakham (rather than Syston) for no obvious reason.

Some of the villages that would now otherwise be unserved (eg South Croxton and Barsby as shown on the above map) are within the new FoxConnect zone 2 so have DRT as a replacement option.

Similarly, Fox Connect zone 1 north east of Melton Mowbray has replaced former routes 23/25 which ran seven times a day between Melton Mowbray and Bottesford/Stathern carrying around 3,500 passengers a month (ie over 100 a day).

Villages in the other section of zone 1 used to be served by routes 55/56 (Melton Mowbray and Grantham) which has been renumbered to route LC3, also offering four journeys a day.

Here’s an extract from the wonderful maps on the Bus Atlas website showing (in pink) the routes previously operated by Centrebus out of Melton Mowbray indicating the withdrawn and renumbered routes (23/25, 55 and 100) which broadly coincide with the new FoxConnect zones 1 and 2.

Route 8 between Grantham, Melton Mowbray and Loughborough (as shown on the map) continues as before between Grantham and Melton Mowbrary but the section of route in Leicestershire, west of Melton Mowbray to Loughborough, has been renumbered LC8 even though it’s the same bus providing through journeys.

FoxConnect provides a supplementary resource for people living in villages in this rural part of the county wanting to travel to Melton Mowbray, Bottesford or Waltham on the Wolds (zone 1) and Melton Mowbray or Syston (zone 2) – which is what the County Council’s online information states, although it seems passengers can book a journey from any village to any other village within each of the two zones rather than being restricted to those named destinations/origins.

Centrebus is operating this latest FoxConnect for the county council using three smart new Mercedes Sprinter minibuses from within its existing fleet.

Vehicles dedicated to the contract are on order but due to the short notice (just four weeks) between being awarded the contract and its start date on 5th January, interim arrangements have been necessary.

FoxConnect operates between 06:00 and 19:30 on Mondays to Saturdays and is free to all passengers during the month of January. After that time concessionary passes will be valid.

Two buses are allocated to zone 1 (one from Centrebus’s Leicester base and the other from Grantham) with one Leicester based bus utilised in the smaller zone 1.

I booked a journey to try the service out for Tuesday last week (its second day) but rearranged this to Thursday just gone, due to the extensive disruption caused by snow and flooding in the area during that first week.

It was no problem booking (albeit I did so three days in advance) but it never usually is in the early days of a new DRT operation, although it has to be remembered there are over 100 passengers a day from the former route 23 looking for an alternative. With my intended train arriving into Bottesford station at 11:54 I booked a pick up between 12:00 and 12:20 to take me to Melton Mowbray, something previously possible on the withdrawn route 23.

An update told me the bus would arrive at 12:10 making for a convenient connection outside the village’s small station on the line from Grantham to Nottingham.

The bus stop outside the station was familiar as I’d travelled to Bottesford in April last year to try out the then new Rushcliffe zone added to NottsBus On Demand DRT from Newark meaning this Leicestershire village which is close to the border of both Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire now has the rare privilege of being served by two different county funded DRT schemes taking passengers in different directions. I think that’s currently a unique claim to fame.

As well as the train, the village is also served by Central Connect’s route 93 (Grantham to Bingham) and Centrebus route 6 (Bottesford to Grantham) and limited peak hour journeys on the newly numbered LC2 to Melton Mowbray (as per the former route 23)…

…now operated by Central Connect. I’m guessing these are well used by school children and wouldn’t be appropriate for a DRT or a minibus.

As 12:10 approached and I could see from the FoxConnect app the bus wasn’t far away as it made its way up from Melton Mowbray, a young woman arrived and waited by the bus stop so I enquired if she was waiting for the FoxConnect bus which she confirmed.

Impressed by this I asked her when she booked the journey and she explained last night she’d wanted to book a ride to take her to work in the village of Harby at 08:00 this morning but the app had told her there were no buses available. Having kept trying for later times 12:10 was the earliest journey time offered so she was now four hours late for work, adding that she’d rung her employer to let her know. She also added she’d had no problem booking a journey at 08:00 on Friday the previous week.

And, in a nutshell Georgina had summed up the problem with DRT. You simply can’t depend on it. The theory is great that residents of rural areas have many more options of when and where they can travel rather than being restricted to destinations served on a limited fixed bus timetable but if the bus/es have already been nabbed by other passengers in other villages who booked well ahead, then you’re stranded. It’s effectively Demand Unresponsive Transport, or even Digital Demand Unresponsive Transport (DDUT).

We dropped Georgina off in Harby 12 minutes later and continued down to Melton Mowbray where we arrived at 12:42, taking just over half an hour and carried no other passengers.

The driver was then finished for the day and a new driver took over with a couple of passengers boarding and as I watched the comings and goings at the terminus in Melton Mowbray it quickly became evident there were quite a few DRT passengers around. They’d previously used routes 23/25 and 100 and were now using the new Fox Connect particularly around the previous departure times of the withdrawn fixed journeys which brings it home to you the crazy situation where a couple of weeks ago half a dozen passengers may have boarded a fixed time journey from Melton Mowbray at 13:15 to take them home but this week those same six people have all had to individually book their journey at about that time and the bus will probably take a similar route as it did a fortnight ago dropping them all off back home.

The upside is the DfT are perfectly happy to fund this (much more) expensive way of operating buses in rural areas from Government BSIP money because it uses technology and feels modern and ‘cool’ whereas the old way was considered old hat and funding by country councils was squeezed and so such bus routes were cut. Such is progress.

However, the new set up has seen an increase in the peak vehicle requirement of three buses, even taking account of the withdrawn routes, and it is doubtful whether passengers are now receiving a better service in this very rural part of the country, as I found on my DRT ride.

As well as renumbering all the inter-urban routes into an LC series, Leicestershire County Council also changed and renumbered the small network of town routes in Melton Mowbray using a new MC1-MC5 sequence which includes improvements to frequencies and times, according to the online spiel.

There was quite a bit of confusion evident at the Melton Mowbray bus terminal point on Thursday lunch time after all these changes, but it was good to see new timetables were all displayed…

… and Centrebus staff were being very helpful to passengers explaining which route they needed, not least the very friendly and helpful Damon who it was a pleasure to meet and chat to and who was even able to access the FoxConnect manifest on his phone and reassure waiting passengers their minibus was on its way and when it would arrive.

Another driver took the time to use wet-wipes to clear some of the muck thrown up off the rural roads from the lights on the minibus as well as the rear number promoting FoxConnect which I thought was a nice touch.

The County Council has also done a good job in making information available online about the changes including in advance of 5th January, although oddly the dedicated FoxConnect.co.uk website still only has information about the first scheme introduced in 2022 with nothing about this latest one which in turn is included on a website called ChooseHowYouMove. It might be better to take down that original site. It also looks as though there are two FoxConnect apps, one for this latest scheme and one for the original but that might just be my own confusion, having now got so many DRT apps on my phone.

Roger French

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