September 2026 — Motion 2 passed at Full Council
23 September 2026 — Last night, Milton Keynes City Council’s Full Council backed Motion 2 — a dedicated bus route for western Milton Keynes. The Cabinet will now explore a new service connecting Stony Stratford, Fairfields, Whitehouse, Hazeley, Oxley Park and Westcroft through the Enhanced Partnership.
You can watch the petition being presented and the motion being discussed in the council meeting recording.
Thank you to the 415 of you who signed the petition, to Cllr Kunal Puri for tabling the motion, to Cllr Kerrie Bradburn for her amendment, and to the councillors across all parties who backed it.
This all started when it took me over two hours to come back home from Westcroft District Centre. That journey was not slow because of an exceptional disruption. It took that long because the public transport connection western Milton Keynes needs simply is not there.
There is one argument I expect to hear again in the coming weeks: that a new route may not be viable, because bus ridership is falling and the current numbers do not add up. Falling ridership is obviously a real issue, and viability cannot simply be ignored. But neither can today’s ridership be treated as a fixed measure of demand for a future route.
Look at it plainly. Almost nobody takes a bus from Whitehouse to Stony Stratford right now because the journey costs £6 and takes over an hour. Anyone who has access to a car will drive instead, because they have been given no practical alternative. If we use the predictable result of a missing service to justify keeping that service missing, we are not assessing viability — we are simply giving up.
Would those same drivers take the bus every time, if a decent service existed? Probably not. But from time to time? For sure! Who enjoys driving through Stony Stratford’s narrow streets and then hoping that a nearby parking space has not already been taken, particularly at the weekend? A reliable bus that drops you near the High Street could be genuinely competitive with the car for exactly those journeys.
That is the part a snapshot of current ridership misses: demand for public transport is not independent of the service being offered. Frequency, journey time, price and where the route actually goes all shape whether people can use it. A direct service would not merely redistribute today’s passengers; it would give people a practical choice they do not currently have.
This is a milestone, not a finish line. A passed motion is not a running bus, and the hard work of the Enhanced Partnership process is still ahead. But last night, the council stopped treating the current state of things as inevitable. I will keep pushing until wheels are actually on the road.
July 2026 — Real momentum
It’s been a busy few weeks. What started as a petition and a website is now a conversation happening across parish councils, the city council, and a bus operator. Here’s where things stand.
Community councils are listening
We’ve now presented the campaign to two community councils. Fairfields Community Council heard the case on 9 July — Fairfields sits directly on the proposed route, and the council had already been following the petition after hearing about it from neighbouring parishes. Whitehouse Community Council hosted a presentation on 16 July at The Hive — our home patch, and the estate that started the campaign.
Next up: Shenley Church End Parish Council on 10 August, covering Oxley Park, Grange Farm, and Shenley Wood — all estates along the southern end of the proposed route.
Each of these meetings adds to the weight of evidence that the communities along this corridor want better bus connections. If your parish or community council hasn’t heard about the campaign yet, ask them to get in touch.
Road infrastructure: a timeline at last
One of the biggest questions has been when the road network will support a bus service. At the Whitehouse Community Council meeting on 16 July, we got an answer from Urban & Civic, the master developer for the western expansion area:
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Barrosa Way is expected to fully open between Christmas 2026 and February 2027. This is the road with the dedicated bus lanes that have sat empty since 2023.
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The link road between Fairfields and Whitehouse is not due to reopen until 2028.
What does this mean for the bus? A service could realistically launch once Barrosa Way opens, running via Watling Street through Fairfields rather than taking the direct link road. It’s a slightly longer diversion, but it works — and when the link road opens a year later, the route gets shorter and faster.
The key point: the infrastructure timeline and the bus planning timeline are converging. With the council’s bus franchising assessment being procured right now, the work to design this route should be happening in parallel — so the service is ready to launch when the road is.
What’s next
- Shenley Church End Parish Council — 10 August, 7:30 PM
- MK City Council bus franchising assessment — procurement decision due 11 August
- Continued engagement with bus operators and council officers
Want to help? Sign the petition if you haven’t already, and share this page with your neighbours.
For questions or to get involved: mkweabus@defp.uk.