Campaign for Better Transport urges Government to take on board Transport Select Committee bus travel report recommendations

Welcoming the publication of the Transport Select Committee’s new report, Implementation of the National Bus Strategy, today (30 March), Norman Baker from Campaign for Better Transport, said:

“We welcome the recommendations in this report and urge the Government to take them on board. Without urgent changes to the way buses are funded, the national bus strategy is unlikely to deliver the better bus network the country needs. We’d like to see all bus funding transferred to the Department for Transport with one single, long-term funding pot for buses. Funding needs to be ringfenced to ensure local authorities can stop bus cuts and support economically and socially necessary services for the benefit of residents.”

Local bus services have been in decline for a number of years, but Campaign for Better Transport research has revealed that between March 2021, when Bus Back Better was launched, and March 2023, 23 per cent of bus services in England have been cut, resulting in 2,800 fewer services.

More than a year after Bus Back Better was published, the Government invited local authorities to bid for a share of £1.1 billion in Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) funding to help improve bus services in their areas. 31 local authorities were initially successful but were awarded less than they had applied for. Almost two thirds received nothing.

To help realise the ambitions of Bus Back Better, Campaign for Better Transport is calling for:  

• All bus funding to be transferred to the Department for Transport and local authority bus funding ringfenced to ensure that funding is not spent on other public services
• The current competitive system of bus funding replaced with a single, long-term funding pot for all
• The £2 bus fare cap to be extended and better marketed to attract new passengers.

ENDS

For further information please contact the press office on 07984 773 468 (calls only no texts) or communications@bettertransport.org.uk.

Notes to Editors

1. The Government published its long-awaited national strategy for buses, Bus Back Better, on 15 March 2021.
2. At the end of March 2021, there were 12,066 live local bus registrations in England (Source: Traffic Commissioners annual report 2020/21). As of 1 March 2023, there were 9,264 live local bus registrations (Source: Traffic Commissioners response to Freedom of Information request by Campaign for Better Transport, Ref: 2093/TC/ALL/FOI; the Traffic Commissioners’ office caveat there may be small discrepancies in previous years’ data.)
3. The Government committed £3 billion to Bus Back Better and has so far spent only £1.4 billion (BSIP funding: £1,041,100,000, ZEBRA (zero-emission bus regional areas) funding: £294,400,000).
4. Previous Campaign for Better Transport research showed that more than a quarter of English bus services have been lost in a decade, with services cut by 16 per cent in the first year of the pandemic alone.
5. The £2 bus fare cap is an England-wide Government incentive scheme to help passengers with the cost of living and caps a single bus journey at £2 until the end of June.
6. The Department for Transport is responsible for transport funding, but some local authority bus funding is allocated by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Despite being allocated to provide supported bus services, it is not ringfenced and as such can be spent on other local authority services instead.
7. In April 2022, the Government announcement that 31 local authorities – 40 per cent of all authorities which submitted Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIPs) – would benefit from a slice of the £1.1 billion in funding to improve bus services in their areas.
8. Campaign for Better Transport analysis highlighted how the competitive nature of Government funding for local transport is disadvantaging rural local authorities and failing rural communities. Read the analysis here.
9. Analysis by the Confederation of Passenger Transport shows that investing £10 billion in buses over the next five years would increase the number of bus services by seven per cent, improving services for an additional 20 million people, and generating £3.68 of economic benefits for every £1 invested.