Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of bus service levels in England.

The Government is investing significant levels of funding to drive improvements to services and make them cheaper, including over £1 billion allocated in 2022 to help LTAs deliver their Bus Service Improvement Plans, a further £1 billion redirected from HS2 to improve bus services in the North and the Midlands as part of Network North, and nearly £600 million to cap single bus fares at £2 from 1 January 2023 until the end of 2024.

Bus service provision in England outside London remained at over 85% of pre-COVID levels in 2022/23, despite patronage dropping to 10% of pre-pandemic levels during the height of the pandemic. This is due to the Government providing unprecedented levels of funding to protect vital bus routes following the pandemic, totalling £2 billion between March 2020 and June 2023. The Government is also currently providing over £300 million to local transport authorities (LTAs) and bus operators to support and improve bus services until April 2025, on top of the nearly £260 million the Department for Transport makes available every year through the Bus Service Operators Grant to help run services that might otherwise be unprofitable and could lead to cancellation