The Government has finally admitted what the people living in the villages around Brentwood and Billericay have known for years - rural bus services are just not good enough.

In a newly published report ordered by Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Cabinet Office has revealed that only 16 per cent of rural households in England were within six minutes walk of a bus stop with a frequent service, compared with 66 per cent across the country as a whole.

When the twin 'convenience' considerations of walking distance to a bus stop and the frequency of buses are both taken into account, things look even worse, with a tiny four per cent of rural households falling within the top two convenience categories.

This is even though the average journey to school is nearly twice as long for rural youngsters and the average shopping journey is 60 per cent further.

The obvious consequence is that rural folk are forced to rely on pollution-spewing cars, and the report does indeed confirm that car ownership is 13 per cent higher outside of the urban areas than the national average of 70 per cent.

And things are getting worse. In fact, the number of rural parishes without a bus service of any sort increased from 14 to 22 per cent between 1991 and 1997.

The Government has acknowledged that there is a problem, and last month announced that it plans to plough £17million into 50 new local bus and rural transport schemes across the country, as well as introducing a fuel duty rebate for bus operators servicing rural routes.

But as well as highlighting the countryside's transport problems, the report also makes difficult reading for the county as a whole.

It reveals that Essex people are some of the least productive in the country, with the county coming fourth from bottom in a league of English regions based on gross domestic product - or the value of goods and services produced - per head of population.

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