Nicholas Soames – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nicholas Soames on 2016-02-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to maintain a strong commercial bus market.

Andrew Jones

Buses play a vital role as the backbone of our public transport system and are key to a healthy growing economy. We want to see the bus industry thrive and are introducing a Buses Bill which will provide local authorities and bus operators with a wider, more effective range of tools to improve local bus services. The Bill will include arrangements to allow commercial bus operators to work more effectively in partnership with local government and other local stakeholders.

Furthermore, the Government decided that financial support for bus services provided through the Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) system – around £250m a year – should be protected as part of the 2015 spending round, preserving millions of bus passenger journeys. Around £200m of that is paid to individual bus operators, according to how much fuel they use in running their services. The remaining funding is paid to local authorities to help support bus services in their areas. DfT is reforming BSOG to make it more effective, and plans to publish details of changes to the system in early 2016. This should improve the grant’s effectiveness in supporting bus services, and provide better value to the taxpayer.