Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether his Department has plans to extend additional covid-19 bus and light rail funding after October 2022.

The Government has provided over £2 billion of support through emergency and recovery grants to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on bus and light rail services. A further £184 million in funding has been provided to continue supporting the sector following the Covid-19 pandemic until October 2022 to give services the maximum amount of time to recover.

The Government has also provided over £2.5 billion in new funding to support improvements to bus services and are on track to meet the commitment of £3 billion invested in buses in this Parliament. This includes over £1 billion in new funding for bus transformation deals to deliver London-style fares, infrastructure, and service improvements. It is expected that the local authorities who have been awarded indicative funding allocations to deliver their Bus Service Improvement Plans as announced in April should receive final allocations in October to coincide with the end of recovery funding.