Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether his Department is taking steps to help increase the number of passengers on bus routes where the fare is not capped at £2.

The central aim of our National Bus Strategy is to get more people travelling by bus, and we will only achieve this if we can make buses a practical and attractive alternative to the car for more people.

The Department for Transport is investing in the bus sector to deliver the ambitions of the National Bus Strategy to make bus services more reliable and cheaper. We are providing over £2 billion of funding for English Local Transport Authorities (LTAs) outside London to support the delivery of Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIPs), some of which include the introduction of local fares initiatives. This includes £1 billion from the first phase of BSIP funding announced in 2022, £160m from the second phase of funding announced in May 2023 (BSIP+) and a further £1 billion announced by the Prime Minister in October 2023 for LTAs across the North and the Midlands, redirected from HS2.

Our £20 million Rural Mobility Fund (RMF) in England is supporting 16 innovative, demand-led minibus trials in rural and suburban areas across 16 local authorities in England. These pilots are exploring whether Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) can serve these communities more effectively than traditional public transport solutions alone.

On top of this, we have announced that a new uplift of 60% will be added to Community Transport Operators’ (CTOs) Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) claims until 31 March 2025.