On 20th November, I backed the Government's transformative plans to deliver better buses by providing nearly £9 million in funding.
The investment has been designated to enhance popular routes, protect rural services, and increase bus use for shopping, socialising, and commuting. It will help prevent service reductions on at-risk routes and improve punctuality, to bring an end to the current postcode lottery of unreliable services.
Totalling £955 million across England, the funding represents a record level of recent investment for bus improvements for the majority of areas, alongside once-in-a-generation reform to deliver London-style bus services to every corner of the country.
In recent years, bus services in England’s regions outside London collapsed, with thousands of bus services cut, and almost 300 million fewer miles driven by buses per year, since 2010. Across Suffolk alone, bus miles declined by nearly 18%.
As part of this investment, the way funding is allocated has been reformed. The reforms will allocate funding based on need and will end the current wasteful system of competitive bidding for funding, which wastes resources and delays decisions.
This funding announcement comes alongside the Government’s plans to deliver the biggest overhaul to the country’s bus services in a generation, and call time on four decades of failed deregulation.
The Government is expanding the power to take back control of local bus services to every community, and is speeding up the process of delivering public control of buses by removing barriers to bus franchising and public ownership.
The funding announcement is the latest stop on the Government’s journey to better buses, with a new Buses Bill to be introduced to Parliament in the coming months.
Comments