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Know Your Buses public display
One of our earliest campaigns in 2006 aimed to give local residents better access to public transport information in Leighton Buzzard.
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Funding for a new town centre bus service
Our five-year campaign helped to fund the Dash Direct (D1) in 2010, a town centre bus service for residents at the Sandhills estate.
Leighton Buzzard town centre
We’re dedicated to supporting the local businesses in our town and have ran a number of successful campaigns to promote local shopping and sustainable transport.
The food supply chain, from production to consumption, is a major contributor to climate change, accounting for nearly one third of all greenhouse emissions. Global livestock production alone has a greater carbon footprint (14.5 %) than all cars. Sadly, that’s not the end of the story.
We also waste a huge amount of food, with about a third of all food produced globally lost in the supply chain. With these figures in mind, campaigning for more local alternatives to the current way of producing and consuming is one of our priorities.
How shopping locally can have a global impact
Eating more seasonal and local fruit and vegetables and less, but better, meat from local butchers and farmers can help reduce emissions in many ways. It curbs the amount of energy that goes into food production, storage and transportation and also means fewer emissions from chemical pesticides and intensive livestock farming. It also results in less food being wasted in the supply chain.
With this in mind, we feel passionate about our town centre and we actively support our local farmers, the Leighton Buzzard Market and Farmers Market, as well as all the other local independent shops. We believe our local retailers not only represent a sustainable way of producing and selling, but they also help people avoid driving to out-of-town superstores.
How we support our local businesses
- We support the Farmers Market and the Leighton Buzzard market generally, securing funding from national Friends of the Earth for the creation of banners to advertise the Farmers Market throughout the town.
- We support the independent shops in the town centre – from cafes to breweries. Our campaign led to the creation of local shopping directories on the bus shelters at the bottom of the high street.
- We have campaigned against out-of-town retail parks that can have a negative impact on local independent retailers, which divert people from the town centre.
- We led a campaign to protest against the project to build a huge Tesco superstore and campaigned against the out-of-town Grovebury Road retail park.
- We are campaigning for more clothes shops in the area as people tend to travel to Milton Keynes due to the lack of clothes shops (especially menswear).
- We lobbied central government along with other local groups and authorities to secure £1 million of funding for the Sandhills bus service to encourage greater use of public transport into the town centre.