Bus Service S3 north of Woodstock, including both branches to Charlbury and Chipping Norton, was declared as non-commercial by Stagecoach and since October 2022 have been run under contract to the County Council. This arrangement is due to run until August 2024.

This funding was obtained to give bus services which have suffered as a result of the pandemic a chance to return to commercial viability.

Ultimately, the service needs more fare-paying passengers to use it for it to be a commercial success; the implementation of the Oxford traffic filter scheme may well generate additional usage but we will not know if that is the case until early 2024.

We encourage people to use the S3 service and encourage others locally. If we do not use it, we could lose it!

Stonesfield Parish Council