Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many operational bus services have been running in Cumbria in each of the last 20 years.

Bus operators must register their services with a traffic commissioner in the traffic area in which the service operates. The traffic commissioner operates a live system. The number of bus services at a local authority level is only provided for the current point in time. However, data is held for previous years at a regional level.

Whilst the data is not held to the level and time period requested, the table below shows the number of live local bus registrations in the North Western Traffic Area as at 31 March of each year.

Live local bus service registrations in the North Western Traffic Area, as at 31 March, 2008 to 2018

Source: Traffic Commissioners' annual reports

Local authorities are best placed to manage changes in their local bus network. The Bus Services Act 2017 gives them additional powers to do so through partnership working with commercial operators. It also gives Mayoral Combined authorities the automatic right to franchise their bus network and the Department for Transport can also grant these powers to other local authorities who make a satisfactory business case. The Department is also developing regulations to require bus operators and local transport authorities to provide data, in open formats, about local bus services including routes and timetable data; fares and ticket data; and real time information. We are working closely with industry to develop the regulations and it is intended the requirements will be phased in over the next few years.