Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much has been spent from the public purse on bus services per capita in (a) Birmingham, (b) the West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority, formerly Centro and (c) each region of England from 2009-10 to the most recent financial year for which information is available.

The attached table shows the estimated revenue spend on bus services and estimated revenue spend per capita on bus services for the English regions, West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority and Birmingham for 2009/10 to 2014/15, the years for which data are available.

The table also shows figures used to derive the total revenue spend from:

• Bus Service Operator Grant paid by Department for Transport (DfT) directly to bus operators
• Local authority expenditure on concessionary fares (from Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) estimates)
• Local authority expenditure on support to bus operators (from DCLG estimates)

The estimates do not include spend from DCLG estimates on ‘public and other transport planning, policy and strategy’ and ‘public transport management’ that could relate to bus services. It is not possible to determine the extent of spend on bus services in these categories from the DCLG figures. Also, any local authority or DfT capital spend on bus infrastructure has been excluded.

Local authority revenue spend is not available for Birmingham. They receive a proportion of the funding from West Midlands ITA to run bus services in their area that is not disaggregated in the DCLG local authority spend estimates.