What’s Heckmondwike got that Lewes wants?

Tuesday 22nd September 2026

Answer: a brand new bus station.

(And a Mayoral authority, of course)

Replacing a smaller ‘Bus Hub’ (which comprised four bus shelters)…

… Heckmondwike’s smart new facility opened on Sunday with Mayor Brabin proudly heralding it as the very first bus station to be introduced as part of her Weaver branded bus network coming next year to West Yorkshire .

The fascinating thing about this development is the town centre location, constrained site and number of buses using it are similar characteristics to the position in Lewes, East Sussex as described in previous blogs, not least last Thursday when reviewing the book just published which chronicles the history of the county town’s bus station and its sad demise.

What a pity leading decision makers in East Sussex don’t have access to £10.5 million from a Transforming Cities Fund (like their counterparts in West Yorkshire) which has funded Heckmondwike’s new bus station. Which is all the more important as the original budget for the project in 2022 was £5 million.

It’s an interesting twist on ‘levelling up’ and rather stands on its head the usual myth the North is starved of transport investment compared to (let’s ignore London) the South.

For want of £4.5 million the boarded up site in Lewes could be purchased from current owners, the Generator Group today (it’s up for sale), and a sum of £6 million (to equate to Heckmondwike’s overall cost) would be more than enough to refurbish the current building and have money left over for a few years running costs – and, even better, the site would then be firmly back in public ownership thus securing its future (albeit that’s what was said in 1968 and look what subsequently happened).

I took a trip up to Heckmondwike yesterday to see what £10.5 million gets you in the way of bus station facilities in West Yorkshire and what it tells us about future developments for Weaver.

The site is conveniently located in Hekmondwike town centre, close to the junction for Cleckheaton, Liversedge, Dewsbury, Batley and Birstall.

A new two storey building…

… houses a glass fronted waiting area with the height of the two storeys with 14 individual seats arranged in threes and fours…

… and two electronic signs showing the next 20 departures (including three cancellations yesterday lunch time)…

… and from where there’s an accessible toilet and ‘changing places’ facility.

Aside from a Switch Room and a Server Room (both behind locked doors) the only other ground floor utilisation seemed to be a small office for staff marked decisively as ‘staff only’.

Further along the elliptical building I guess there’s a room on the first floor offering a facility for staff to take their breaks accessed from the staff office. There didn’t seem to be any public access so no hope for a café as in Lewes’s heyday.

Outside there’s a bus manoeuvring area with five head on (and reverse off) stands…

… with a sixth stand as a drive through on the access road.

As you can see, the area for passengers to wait is part enclosed and part in the open and seems very constrained with very little room for queues to form.

Most of the stands have just three seats although as already mentioned there are 16 seats in the waiting room. There’s an electronic sign showing the next four departures above each stand and a static printed display of departures.

The two most frequent routes, every 15 minutes, being route 229 (Leeds – Huddersfield) and route 268 (Wakefield-Dewsbury – Bradford) each have exclusive use of one stand for each direction utilising stands 2, 3, 4 and 5 with stand 1 having routes 200/201 to Leeds (each half hourly) and the drive through stand 6 seeing hourly routes 250 (Dewsbury). 261 (Huddersfield), 271 (Batley) and 272 Cleckheaton. It all makes for a nice even utilisation of each stand.

I noticed the PR blurb about the new bus station mentioned “enhanced cycle parking facilities installed outside to support active travel connections” but all I could see were these four arch stands in the open.

It also extols the benefits of being accessible and it’s true there is a level access into the outside waiting area but there’s also step access too as shown in the above photo.

Sadly there are no toilets for those without a RADAR key – just the locked accessible cubicle and Changing Places facility which made me wonder if that provision falls foul of the Equalities Act in a counterintuitive way.

It’s a great improvement on the previous ‘Bus Hub’ (four bus shelters) and it’s good to see public investment in facilities for bus passengers. Again, the PR blurb extols it being a “green infrastructure” with “a sedum green roof featuring circular roof lights, complemented by a living green wall and new perimeter landscaping.”

Indeed I spotted this “Relaxed Mowing Area” on the perimeter – whatever that means?

It didn’t look large enough to be mowed.

The perimeter landscaping includes some rather nice public realm improvements including wooden seats…

… with one offering a great view of the bus manoeuvring area dedicated to “Phillip ‘Mr Bus’ Carlton” 1949-2020 “a true gentleman, bus driver and a proper bus enthusiast”.

Nice.

As I travelled over to Heckmondwike from Wakefield we passed through Dewsbury where work is well in hand on a £23 million transformation and refurbishment of Dewsbury’s bus station thanks, again, to that Transforming Cities Fund.

Work began in 2025 with completion expected by Summer 2027.

Dream on, Lewes.

Roger French

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