Since 2022, BuzzCycles has actively challenged Central Bedfordshire Council through our Permeability Survey of the Eastern Estates, aiming to improve pedestrian and cycling connections between established and new housing areas. Our recent advocacy included Chris Stevenson guiding councillors on a cycling tour to highlight critical issues, such as the lack of a footpath at the Stanbridge Road bus stop and the incomplete Clipstone Park to Meadow Way cycle path. A 2025 resurvey of these developments revealed minimal progress; further details can be found in our article The Great Wall of Leighton Buzzard.
BuzzCycles Takes Permeability Concerns to CBC Committee
On the 10th of April 2025, Leighton BuzzCycles Committee members Chris Stevenson, Paul Fox and Peter Bate attended Central Bedfordshire Council’s (CBC) Sustainable Communities Committee meeting. BuzzCycles has been following the permeability of Leighton Buzzard’s new housing estates to the north and the east of the centre. We’ve been consistently disappointed with the lack of permeability between different housing estates, often finding fences and walls splitting adjacent communities for no good reason, forcing residents to make long winding journeys either by foot, cycle, or more likely given the distance, car. As you may have guessed, this sort of development does not align with CBC’s climate and sustainable transport goals.
The below text is the question that Treasurer Chris Stevenson asked regarding these permeability issues in the Sustainable Communities Committee meeting, hoping to get a positive response from the council members. It’s our experience that we often get positive experiences and then seemingly little if anything happens in the following months, but this is the only means we have on applying pressure to get basic active travel friendly design built in to housing developments. Of course, not only do we want existing issues to be fixed, but also receive some assurance from councillors that future developers who apply for planning permission will be held to a higher standard.
Below is the question which we asked the council:
The Impenetrable Barrier: A Four-Mile Divide
Spoken by Chris Stevenson
In the past few years, several large new estates have been built east and south of Leighton Buzzard. They are separated from the existing town by a barrier 4 miles long, which is impenetrable apart from by a few main roads, some of which don’t even have pavements. So there is no choice but for people to use cars to get around.
BuzzCycles raised this problem even before the estates were built. Four years ago, we again highlighted the problem to CBC with a 35-page report, which showed the many locations where walking and cycling links need to be created. All our recommendations were included in the recent Leighton-Linslade LCWIP; however, none of them were put in place by the developers, and almost none have been implemented to this day despite money being available. In fact, only one has been partially made into an official link so far. Three other gaps are now well-used but only ‘informally’ as a result of residents’ “direct action”; but the rest are still completely unusable – including two deliberately built over by the developers, and one notorious location with a missing pavement which has a lot of pedestrians actually walking in a very dangerous road. Some locations only require a new fence gap and a surfaced path to make them usable – not difficult. The whole Eastern Leighton Buzzard Development was planned and authorised on the proviso that all facilities would be reached by internal trips. [SHOW TPLAN] The approved Transport Plan, Section 7.5, states these percentages: doctors 100% of trips, pub 100%, care home 100%, schools 90 of trips. The figure today for all of these is zero. And because there are no links for external trips, everyone drives to town, hugely increasing traffic congestion. One example problem is the proposed new leisure centre way out on the eastern edge of the new estates. Currently, the whole of Leighton-Linslade will drive there through the congested town centre. These are not sustainable developments.
Question 1, that we have, is please could you give us a timeline for when these vital links will be built and how regular progress updates will be communicated?
Question 2 is could you tell us how we can prevent this situation happening yet again with new developments? We’ve recently objected to three brand new developments in Leighton-Linslade, all of which are unbelievably repeating exactly these mistakes – stating that they are prioritising walking and cycling but providing absolutely no infrastructure to support them.
Uncertain Timelines but a Glimmer of Hope
First of all we were told that we’ve done a lot to raise the profile of cycle links and permeability issues across Leighton Buzzard. According to Councillor John Baker (Executive Member for Highways), our work “has been noted”, which is pleasing to hear of course, but ideally we’d want answers on when existing developments with broken links will be fixed, along with what will be done to prevent these sort of issues happening in the future.
Following the councillors’ response to Chris’s speech, it wasn’t just Leighton Buzzard that had these problems; other CBC towns have similar issues, and this discussion can be found in the council’s meeting video starting here. Eventually, the discussion ended in councillors deciding whether to have a report or a “task and finish” group relating to the issue. The committee members were eventually informed that a task and finishing group would likely not begin working until next year, and that a detailed report may be preferable so that work on the issue can begin sooner. In the end, the committee unanimously decided upon a report.
So, we are getting a report. We can’t tell you what the timeline for existing issues are actually getting fixed, and how the report will affect future planning permissions, but it’s something! Keep following us on our site and social media channels for further updates.
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