Bus Back Better: three years on, winners and losers are clear
It has now been three years since the Government published its national strategy for buses, Bus Back Better, which pledged to improve bus services for millions across the country. But three years later, how is this plan holding up?
When this landmark strategy was announced, it’s no exaggeration to say that transport campaigners breathed a collective sigh of relief. Yes, there would inevitably be issues to work out, but it cannot be overstated how significant it was to finally have a national strategy for buses. While buses are England’s most-used form of public transport, services were in a severe state of decline that was only further compounded by the pandemic. Buses were in crisis, and finally that crisis was being taken seriously with £3 billion of funding to boot.
And just how was that funding divided up? Well, now we come to those aforementioned issues we need to work out.
It took the Government over a year to begin the process of allocating desperately needed bus funding. Local authorities were asked to compete against each other and bid for a share of an initial £1.1 billion to use for Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIPs). Thirty-one local authorities were initially successful but were awarded less than they had applied for. Almost two thirds received nothing. From our analysis at the time, we found that smaller, more rural areas lost out on funding to larger combined authorities with more experienced transport teams. Those who were unsuccessful in the first round of funding received a cut of another pot later, but these sums were much smaller.
Add to this, some additional £1 billion funding reallocated from the cancellation of HS2 north of Birmingham (£150 million of which has so far been allocated), which only councils in the North and Midlands were eligible for. The final picture is one of winners and losers in the competition for bus funding.
Winners and losers
We’ve crunched some numbers and found a £230 per head difference between local authority areas when it comes to Government bus funding. Portsmouth City Council has received £235.76 per head in government bus funding, while Swindon Council has received a mere £3.98 per head. For a strategy that was meant to improve buses across the country, there’s a striking imbalance with 12 councils receiving over £50 per head, but 15 others less than £6 per head.
Asking local authorities to compete for funding will inevitably result in a winners and losers situation. Meanwhile it’s bus passengers who continue to suffer with many services across the country still at risk of cuts. While councils now have powers to improve bus services, they can only do so with the necessary funds.
This is why we’re calling on the Government to change the way buses are funded so that the ambitions of this strategy we welcomed three years ago can be adequately carried out.
We’re calling for:
- The current competitive system of bus funding to be replaced with a single, long-term funding pot for all
- Commitment to guarantee minimum levels of bus service provision for all communities, with the funding allocations to match
- Ringfenced bus funding to ensure it is not reallocated to other local authority priorities.
It’s been three years now and there’s still work to do. It’s a huge credit to campaigners that buses have been moved up the political agenda, but given bus provision fell by 5% last year, we still need the vision of Bus Back Better to be made reality.
