Ms Judith Shepherd of the DfT is sending out a standard letter to everyone who writes to them about the TransWilts service at present, and I have been asked by several people to comment.

Here is a sample of what I have written:

It's disappointing that the content is very much out of date - using the present tense to refer to services that they withdrew 27 months ago, and inaccurate - telling you that the service specificication (SLC) is better than it ever was, and not telling you that they have changed it (and for the worse) since it was written. It also ignores more recent statistics / data / work that show a very different picture indeed, the "if we had known then what we know now, the service level should be be much higher" position which is now almost universally shared, with the remaining question being "how can we get there?"

I'll be writing a full update / comment on Ms Shepherd's letter over the weekend.  I hate having to fault find but some of the things written look like they could have been designed to mis-inform!

Graham