Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to (a) improve bus services and (b) help ensure that off-peak services are not empty in England.

On 15 March, we launched England’s long-term National Bus Strategy, setting out a bold vision for bus services across the country, and backed by £3 billion of transformational funding over the current Parliament. The Strategy’s central aim is to get more people travelling by bus by making services more frequent, more reliable, easier to understand and use, better co-ordinated and cheaper.

Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIPs), which we expect Local Transport Authorities (LTAs) to produce by the end of October, will need to set out ambitious visions for travel by bus, meeting the goals and expectations in the strategy. BSIPs will influence the share of the £3 billion funding that each authority receives, and LTAs are expected to set out how they will grow bus use, as part of these plans.