Bus Stops

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Westminster Hall

10:59

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (in the Chair)]

I will call Alex Mayer to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. As is the convention for for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Alex Mayer (Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered standards for bus stops.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. This is my first time leading a Westminster Hall debate, and there was a degree of excitement in my office last week when the email arrived, alongside another email about a coach debate that I will lead in November. You wait ages for a Westminster Hall debate to turn up and then two come along at once.

Many people in the House know that I bang on about buses, because I think they are brilliant. There are 3.7 billion bus journeys made a year. As is often said, they are the most used form of public transport. I assume that means that bus stops are the most used places for people to hang around waiting for public transport. That is why I believe we should lavish some attention on them, not least because they are all around us. About 86% of people live within a 10-minute walk of a bus stop. The Bus Services Act 2025 gives the Secretary of State brand new powers to look at the location, design and construction of stopping places—bus stops.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the location of bus stops. I am so frustrated when I have taken the train to Cambridge, arrive at the station, see the bus, but have to walk 200 yards around the platform, come out of the station and walk 200 yards back to the bus stop, to find the bus has gone. Why are bus stops such a low priority?

[Alex Mayer]

My hon. Friend has a very snazzy station these days. Cambridge station has much improved over the period he has been the Member of Parliament. Having integrated transport matters. The Government’s strategy, Better Connected, talks to the fact that people use more than one form of public transport, so getting from the train to the bus matters greatly, which I will slightly address later.

The Bus Services Act and accompanying guidance tend to focus on accessibility, which is very important.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing the debate. It might be her first Westminster Hall debate but it will certainly not be her last—there is another on 2 November and more to come. I congratulate her on addressing the importance of improving the accessibility of bus stops. We need to ensure that older people continue to feel confident in using public transport, with adequate resources to encourage usage, because loneliness is increasingly recognised as a public health issue for older people. Does the hon. Lady agree that more must be done to ensure that older people remain independent and continue to access public transport, with the provision of suitable seating and without the barrier of having to stand for prolonged periods?

[Alex Mayer]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I want to encourage as many people as possible to use our bus stops and buses. Seating is important because waiting in comfort makes it more likely that people will choose to use a bus. I am concerned about accessibility, but I also want to ask another question. I want to move beyond, “Can I use the bus stop?” to “Would I like to or choose to use the bus stop?”

I said in my maiden speech that bus stops were the window to the soul of buses—[Laughter.] I know: I am strange like that. But at least I keep to a theme. Each bus stop should give a promise of the journey ahead. I believe, therefore, that we should have national standards for bus stops. Whenever I suggest anything like national standards, Ministers tell me that local people are best placed to decide. I absolutely agree that Ministers should not be deciding whether one’s bus stop is here on the road or 25 yards further along, but national standards do reduce duplication. That is one of the issues that many local councils and transport authorities talk to me about.

Portsmouth is often mentioned as an example of a place with very good bus stops. They have 579 bus stops, and they decided to do a 72-point audit of them. They checked them all and decided that they were going to improve them in four different ways. Interestingly, their transport lead says that they would have welcomed national standards, because they spent a quarter of their time and budget on developing their own local standards. They would much rather have ploughed that into actually making bus stops better. So even they believe that we should have national standards.

I am not saying that one size fits all. It is obvious that a different kind of bus stop will be needed for a small rural area as opposed to a large hospital. Again, people have already done some of this work. Portsmouth has come up with six different varieties of bus stop. The Campaign for Better Transport has four. Norfolk county council has split its bus stops into bronze, silver, gold and platinum. A lot of that work has been done and could be implemented into some national standards.

What do I think should be in those standards? The very first thing is: “Can I find the bus?” That is the first question passengers ask. The modern bus stop really came into being in London in the 1820s. The first buses were in Manchester, but the first bus stops that we would understand were in London with a pole and a flag. Yet over a century later, it is sometimes still quite difficult to find the bus stop, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) said.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I recall, as a shadow Minister, visiting a major institution in the country and sending the management into panic when I asked them where the bus stop was to get back to the station. They had to go and ask the cleaner, and the cleaner told me, “You won’t find it because it’s not marked.” I said, “How does anyone know where the bus comes?” The cleaner said, “The people who use the bus know.” Is that not, I am afraid, an indication of the low priority given in some places to the bus as a mode of transport?

[Alex Mayer]

That is an anecdote that my hon. Friend tells often, and I absolutely agree with him. At completely the other end of the spectrum, I got the train to Stockport recently to make an onward journey to Manchester, for reasons I am sure most Members can understand. When I got to the train station at Stockport, I decided that I would get the bus to a campaign centre in Manchester. I went on a particularly circuitous route to get there, despite the fact that the bus station was actually rather near. That is because the signpost that I could have spotted said it was for Stockport Interchange, Viaduct Park. There was no mention of the word bus and no picture of a bus. As a visitor, I did not have the faintest idea that it meant bus, so I went on a long walk to find the buses. We need to make it simple for people, whether in a rural area or in a larger city.

Sometimes we make public transport too complicated. I am also reminded of a time when a transport officer was trying to explain this snazzy new concept of a transport hub to me. He went round and round in circles until eventually I said, “So it is a bus stop with a bicycle pump.” He reluctantly agreed, but he really did not want to call it a bus stop. We need to talk in a language that passengers understand, so national standards should absolutely start with the basics: a recognisable stop, name and clear signage.

We have found the bus stop, so what next? My second question is: “Does it smell?” It is really slightly broader than that: “Is it clean? Is it well lit?” As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned, is there somewhere I can sit? The Campaign for Better Transport ran a survey called “Bus Stop Stories”, and a man called Paul was quoted as saying:

“The bus stop I use has a shelter, which is positive. However, the so-called seat is far too narrow for someone to actually sit down.”

If the bus stop is just a pole, how does it look—dilapidated or delightful? At the bigger bus stops, are there other things passengers can do? Can I charge my phone or get wi-fi? Some bus stops allow people to call for help; is there CCTV to make people feel safer?

I really welcome the requirement for all local transport authorities to use Transport Focus’s “Your Bus Journey” survey. That is absolutely a push in the right direction, and it will encourage some of the more recalcitrant authorities—perhaps authorities such as Central Bedfordshire council—to collect information on what local passengers actually think. The survey found that, overall, 81% of people were satisfied with their bus stop, but I think there might be a difference between actual passengers who use buses and would-be passengers.

I am really bothered about the would-be passengers, because we will have a growing and thriving network only if we get those people on board. The Campaign for Better Transport says that 23% of people are put off using the bus because of poorly maintained shelters, and that 47% of people say that a clean and comfortable shelter would make them use the bus more often.

My third question is: “Do I know when the bus is coming?” We could have an entire debate on things like real-time information, ghost buses and the like. A timetable really helps people to know whether the bus is coming, but currently only a third of bus stops have up-to-date timetable information, and only around 16% of stops have real-time information—the proportion is growing, which is good.

The research in this area is really rather fascinating. If someone standing at a bus stop with real-time information has been there for 10 minutes, then the bus arrives, and they are surveyed afterwards, they say they have been waiting for 11 minutes. If exactly the same thing happens—someone waits for 10 minutes—but there is no real-time information at the stop, and the passenger is asked how long they have been waiting, they will say they have been waiting for 21 minutes. Obviously, I want all passengers to think they have been there for about 25 seconds, and that it all passes in the blink of an eye because it is so fun waiting at the bus stop. But the key point is that nothing has changed in terms of the clock, only the passenger experience.

There have been positive developments on real-time information. The major bus operators are definitely sending out their pings as to where the bus is far more often than they used to. Non-passenger stops—rest stops or stops when drivers change over—have also been added to the bus open data service, or BODS, which is the national database. That makes it much easier for passengers to know when buses are actually coming.

Challenges remain, though. In some ways we are slightly going backwards: some of the older buses in rural and coastal areas were using 3G, but they are now using 2G because 3G is being turned off. There will always be on-the-day challenges around roadworks and congestion, with bus operators making decisions to try to get their buses back on the timetable; that information also needs to be fed through. Will the Minister please update us on what is happening with the proposed disruption tool that the Department has been working on for some time?

We have many examples of bus operators manually updating their records on the day because a bus is delayed, and then physically ringing up the local transport authority to tell them the same information, so that the authority can manually input it into their systems and it appears at the bus stop for passengers. Is any work going on, perhaps at the Bus Centre of Excellence, to overcome some of those issues, perhaps using AI? All those are issues we would like to see covered in a national standard.

Throughout the country, some places are doing bus stops really well, including the award-winning bus stop outside Asda in Dunstable, which has a green roof, is really wide and spacious, and has seats. There is also a fantastic bus stop in Norwich—I have read about it but not yet visited—that apparently has a swing in it, and which also won a prize. I look forward to visiting.

Given that the latest enhanced partnership manual has in effect recognised that best practice exists throughout the country—for example, on multi-operator ticketing—but that it does not necessarily happen without a bit of a carrot-and-stick approach, would the Minister consider including further national standards on bus stops in a future update of the manual?

Finally, there is the parallel issue of who owns the bus stop. Currently, it is a complete and utter mess—read council websites and weep. This is from West Sussex county council:

“The different elements that go to make up a bus stop are managed by one of 3 different organisations. Please ensure that you contact the correct one if you have a query or wish to report an issue”.

This is from Cambridgeshire county council:

“It should be noted that whilst bus shelters are located on the highway, they do not form part of the highway asset provided and managed by the County Council as the Highway Authority.”

Mayoral devolution could make this even worse.

Many unitary authorities are concerned about splitting up transport and highways powers. A strategic authority officer I spoke to yesterday told me that “Devolution by default” should include giving highways powers to the regional authority, not least to make sure that the revenue that some of the bus stops generate is not then diverted to something like adult social services. We brought track and train together; it is not beyond the wit of man to bring bus stop and bus together, too. The local transport authority clearly ought to have that responsibility.

We also need to make sure there are resources on an ongoing basis. I very much welcome the multi-year funding settlements, but it is not always linear. For example, snazzy new real-time information screens were introduced in Lancaster and then turned off because money was not available for their ongoing upkeep. They are back on again now, but this remains an issue. Some in the industry are concerned that, because we have so much investment right now, in five years’ time—when the contracts end, when the screens need renewing or the batteries start failing—not everything will be in place to allow us to fix any issues.

Fundamentally, we need national standards for our bus stops, because a really nice bus stop brings in more passengers and grows the network. They also give pride in place. They look different and they look good. I therefore urge the Minister to consider national standards for bus stops so that everyone can have a great British bus stop.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (in the Chair)]

The hon. Member for Shrewsbury has been given permission to speak by the hon. Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard and the Minister, but I will be calling the Minister to speak at 20 minutes past 11.

11:17

[Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) on the securing the first of two stimulating Westminster Hall debates. On the really important topic of national standards, I want to discuss a new species of bus stop—the famous floating bus stop.

For the uninitiated, floating bus stops are small alighting platforms in between lines of traffic and cycle lanes. Members may already be able to guess the issue I am going to raise. In my constituency of Shrewsbury, we had a new floating bus stop installed outside our railway stations as part of our gyratory road system. Due to an error, the width of the pavement was less than the minimum 1.5 metre standard requirement.

There has been a 12-month campaign, with protest, public outcry and a petition. The council will now be removing the bus stop because we have had congestion chaos in the town centre and it has blocked access to our important railway station. What should have been a transport interchange—the important road between our bus station and our railway station—has in fact become congested by losing a line of traffic and having a floating bus stop that was too complicated and confusing for people to understand, all because we did not have a simple, single standard. In terms of lessons learned, we need to make sure that Shrewsbury’s story is fed into the ongoing assessment.

It exposes a wider issue. Floating bus stops improve cyclist safety, but they transfer the interaction from bus and cyclist to pedestrian and cyclist. For blind and partially sighted passengers, it is quite a serious concern. The Department for Transport’s guidance recognises the difficulty in detecting a passing cyclist, but the Royal National Institute of Blind People’s research found that 59% of users with sight loss had stopped using bus stops and 55% had changed routes to ensure they felt safe on the road.

The case for a single standard is strong, as long as we ensure accessibility, address geometry and are careful about the relationship between pedestrians and cyclists. I hope that, as the DFT looks at the guidance at the start of next year, it will bring forward the lessons learned from Shrewsbury. We need people to access not just our buses, but trains and, of course, our beautiful town centre.

11:20

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Justin Madders)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Alec. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) for securing her first Westminster Hall debate and for her sustained interest in the quality of bus stops and local transport provision.

Hon. Members will notice that I am, in fact, the roads Minister, not the local transport and Equalities Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield and Rothwell (Simon Lightwood). Not only does he have a very long job title, but he is required in the main Chamber for Women and Equalities questions—which is why I am substituting. I assure hon. Members that I will report back to him the excellent quality of the debate and the issues raised. As the roads Minister, I of course recognise the importance of bus stops and the important effect they have on the streetscape.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard made clear that she is passionate and informed about the importance of bus journeys to everyone. Improving bus journeys is a key part of the Government’s growth mission, and we have made some important announcements on bus travel already. We are determined to deliver better services, grow passenger numbers and connect people with jobs, education, healthcare and opportunity.

The experience of using a bus does not begin when a passenger gets on board. It begins when they plan their journey, reach a stop and decide whether the service feels convenient, reliable and welcoming, as my hon. Friend graphically described in her opening comments. She is absolutely right that the quality of a bus stop is about more than accessibility, although of course accessibility is vital. Passengers notice whether a stop is easy to find and use, whether it offers shelter or seating where appropriate, whether it is clean, whether the surroundings feel safe and well maintained and, as we have discussed, whether there is information about services that is clear and current. Those features help to determine not only whether someone can use the bus, but whether they would make an active choice to do so.

I welcome my hon. Friend’s support for the Bus Services Act 2025. The Act places passenger needs and local accountability at the heart of bus services, giving local leaders greater freedom and the tools to shape networks around the communities they serve. That approach reflects a simple principle: local transport authorities know their areas and are best placed to plan improvements across the whole local bus network. That is why the Department’s vision for buses, within an integrated transport system, puts local transport authorities at the centre of delivery. We have allocated almost £700 million a year through the local authority bus grant for the three years from 2026-27 to 2028-29.

In return for Department for Transport bus funding, authorities are expected to work closely with operators and local communities and to maintain an up-to-date bus service improvement plan. A bus service improvement plan is a public document that should set out an authority’s vision and practical plan for improving services and growing patronage. Our guidance encourages authorities to take a strategic approach to stops and interchanges, including keeping an inventory of infrastructure, identifying priorities for investment and setting locally appropriate standards for facilities and maintenance. Bus funding can support capital improvements to stops, stations and real-time information, as well as services and fares.

My hon. Friend argued that local transport authorities should have clear responsibility for bus stops, rather than responsibility being fragmented across different tiers of local government. I understand the force of that point. The Government’s approach already places the local transport authority in the lead for planning and improving the bus network through its bus services improvement plan and, where relevant, the enhanced partnership.

Where responsibility for highways or individual assets sits elsewhere, close and effective working between the relevant authorities is essential. We expect local plans to join up services, infrastructure and passenger information, rather than treating them as separate issues. That will no doubt be music to the ears of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who explained his frustrations about Cambridge station and bus interchange. I am not sure whether he was complaining that he had to walk 200 metres, or whether that was what caused the disconnect between the bus and rail services, but I hope to see improvement on that. It is a common complaint from many members of the public.

Enhanced partnerships are an important part of that framework for authorities that are not pursuing franchising. Most are performing well, but of course performance is not consistent everywhere. Following the Department’s review, we have published updated guidance and a practical manual, including minimum standards for enhanced partnerships to adopt by March of next year. We will continue to share good practice, and the Bus Centre of Excellence will provide targeted support where it is most needed.

I recognise the case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard for a national bus stop standard, which echoes that of the Campaign for Better Transport. Greater consistency can give passengers confidence about what they can expect, but we have to acknowledge that there are about 330,000 bus stops in England, ranging from simple bus stop flags attached to a post to stops with shelters, seating, real-time information and other enhanced facilities. It is clear that the needs of a busy urban interchange will differ significantly from those of a lightly used rural stop. Careful consider would therefore need to be given before taking action to prescribe a uniform national standard—not least, to the potential burden on local authorities of the cost and practicality of doing so.

It is worth noting that the Local Government Association’s general approach is to avoid national standards that reduce the discretion of local authorities to take decisions about their own networks, although it supports the Government’s role in promoting and sharing best practice. The Government’s present approach is therefore to set a clear national framework and provide guidance while asking local transport authorities to establish and deliver standards suited to local circumstances through their bus service improvement plans. I think that strikes the correct balance, but we will continue to share good practice through our guidance. The Bus Centre of Excellence, which my hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard asked about, will consider the points raised in this debate and whether any of them can be put into future updates to guidance.

As was mentioned, good passenger information is central to standards. Real-time information is improving and digital information has transformed many journeys, but passengers must also be able to rely on accurate, understandable information at the stop. Our bus service improvement plan is clear that stops should display up-to-date information about the services calling there, and that authorities should set out what they will do to provide that good-quality information.

Of course, accessibility remains fundamental to the wider picture. A stop cannot be considered good-quality if disabled people cannot reach it, wait safely or board independently. The Bus Services Act 2025 introduced measures including bus network accessibility plans and powers for statutory guidance on the safety and accessibility of stopping places. The Department is developing that further guidance with disabled people, local authorities and the wider sector.

On that point, my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) raised what is undoubtedly one of the hot topics of the bus stop world: floating bus stops. There is a great deal of concern and discussion nationally about their use. We have issued statutory guidance and asked authorities to pause new installations of the design, which requires passengers to alight directly on to a cycle track, while further research is undertaken. I hope that the local authority in my hon. Friend’s jurisdiction reports back on its experiences, because the more information we get from local authorities on this, the better. It is important that we look very closely at the everyday quality, information, maintenance and governance of all bus stops, and clearly, getting the balance right on floating bus stops is an important part of that work.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard for bringing this issue to the Chamber. We agree on the central point that bus stops are not a peripheral piece of street furniture; they are an essential part of the bus network and the passenger experience. Through the Bus Services Act, sustained funding, bus service improvement plans, stronger enhanced partnerships and clearer guidance, we are giving local leaders the tools and responsibility to make bus travel a more attractive choice, and I have no doubt that we will continue to discuss how we improve on that as the years move by.

Question put and agreed to.

11:29

Sitting suspended.