Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 20 October 2025 to Question 78712 on Bus Services: Fares, what (a) modelling, (b) internal estimates, (c) tables and (d) equations her Department holds on the number of bus journeys for which passengers have paid a fare between £2 and £3 since 5 July 2024 to inform the (i) actual and (ii) projected cost of the (A) £2 and (B) £3 fare cap policy.

On 1 January, the Government introduced a £3 cap on single bus fares in England outside London throughout 2025 to prevent a cliff-edge fare hike for passengers. This was initially funded by over £150 million allocated in the Autumn 2024 Budget, and the estimated cost of a £2 cap over the same period was £444 million. At the Spending Review, the Government confirmed additional funding per year to maintain and improve bus services, and extend the £3 fare cap until March 2027.

The fare cap is a voluntary scheme for eligible bus operators, who are reimbursed the difference between the cap and the shadow commercial fare via fixed funding rather than on an individual journey basis. The Department gathers extensive data from bus operators, and the methodology to determine operator allocations uses historic data from 2022 and current data to predict each operator’s ticket sales for each period of the £3 fare cap.

Participating operators receive details of their fixed funding allocations prior to the start of each phase of the scheme, minimising the financial risk to the Department. It is on this basis that the Department is able to determine the cost of delivering the fare cap.

The Department published the final monitoring and evaluation report into the impact of the first 10 months of the £2 bus fare cap scheme on 12 February. The Department is currently undertaking an evaluation of the £3 single bus fare cap and its impacts, and this will be published once completed.