Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much funding his Department has provided for new buses in Greater Manchester in the latest period for which data is available; and how many and what proportion of the buses that have been purchased with that funding were manufactured in the UK.

The Department for Transport has allocated over £1.1 billion of taxpayer funding to Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) through the five-year City Regional Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) and Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas (ZEBRA) scheme.

While the Department for Transport (DfT) allocate funding for schemes, it is up local authorities and operators how they manage the tender process and who they chose to manufacture the buses on their networks.

As part of the ZEBRA scheme, GMCA was awarded £35.7m to deliver 170 zero emission buses (ZEBs). These buses will be manufactured by Volvo. The body of these buses are manufactured in Egypt by Volvo’s partner MCV.

GMCA has been allocated £1.07bn through its City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement. The city region has chosen to allocate some of this funding towards the purchase of 100 ZEBs, which will be produced by UK manufacturer Alexander Dennis Limited, based in Scarborough and Falkirk. GMCA have informed DfT that they intend to use further CRSTS funding to deliver additional ZEBs.