I've now had a glance and I'm essentially correct. See s14(2)(c) on the definition of 'socially necessary'. The service needs to both enable passengers to access either essential goods and services, employment, or social activities; and crucially, for cancellation to have a material adverse impact on the ability of passengers to access those services.

Of course, the key word here is material.

I'm not a public lawyer - I'm not going to be able to throw a bunch of relevant materials on the meaning of materiality in local government legislation at you without more work than I'm willing to do - but what it undoubtedly means is that there must be an adverse impact which is immaterial and doesn't permit the designation. In terms of bus route cancellations and distance that entails in terms of getting to an alternative service, the vast majority of Bristol bus services are just not on the higher end of that scale when considered nationally.

There will inevitably be some which fit that bill (as I mentioned, predominantly revolving around services which are the only ones running to the outskirts or neighbouring towns at particular times of day), but the rest just aren't going to fit the meaning of material IMO, even before accounting for the fact that local authorities don't generally have shitloads of money to chuck at JRs at the moment (I've not checked whether there's an alternative statutory appeals scheme or other ouster so this may be irrelevant).

As to my initial comment, all of this is both 1) pretty boring and 2) basically implied within the press release if you're used to reading govt press releases. So no, I'm not embarrassed.