Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, in which local authority areas in (a) London and (b) England outside London the number of bus journeys per head of population has increased since 2011.

According to the Department’s annual survey of local bus operators the following local authority areas saw an increase in passenger journeys on local bus service per head between 2011/12 and 2016/17:

• Bath and North East Somerset
• Brighton and Hove
• Bristol, City of
• Halton
• Hertfordshire
• Isle of Wight
• Luton
• Milton Keynes
• North Somerset
• Oxfordshire
• Poole
• Reading
• South Gloucestershire
• Southampton
• Thurrock
• West Berkshire
• Wokingham

The Department does not hold data on passenger journeys per head in individual London authorities. However, overall passenger journeys per head on local bus services in London fell from 283 in 2011/12 to 255 in 2016/17.

Mid-year population estimates from the Office for National Statistics are used to calculate the per head figures but this does not account for bus passengers using the bus outside the local authority in which they reside.