There are widespread fears that England’s National Bus Strategy won’t live up to expectations, but transport minister Baroness Vere doesn’t share them

 
Baroness Vere: “We asked local transport authorities to be ambitious, and lo and behold they were”

 
With the prime minister battling to remain in Downing Street after successive waves of allegations, concerns are mounting over his National Bus Strategy for England.

Although championed by Boris Johnson when it was launched in March 2021, some fear that it may become another example of over-promising and under-delivering. The £1.2bn of funding made available to support improvements to local bus services falls far short of the £7bn-plus requested by local authorities in the Bus Service Improvement Plans that the strategy demanded.

Transport minister Baroness Vere defended the strategy at the CPT’s UK Bus and Coach Conference 2022 this week. In response to a question from Passenger Transport editor Robert Jack, who chaired the event, she said: “We asked local transport authorities to be ambitious, and lo and behold they were. We didn’t give them any guidance about how much money they should be planning for because we wanted them to think about, you know, if there were no restrictions what is the best you could possibly do for your area. So it’s of no surprise to me at all that they were very, very ambitious and that the total amount is necessarily far beyond what we are able to provide at this moment in time.

I am content with where we are at the moment. We know how much money we’ve got from the spending review … We’re about to invest £1.2bn which is a lot of money into all sorts of things that will really make a difference to passengers

She added: “I am content with where we are at the moment. We know how much money we’ve got from the spending review … We’re about to invest £1.2bn which is a lot of money into all sorts of things that will really make a difference to passengers.”

Commenting on the quality of the BSIPs that were submitted by local authorities last October, she said: “We’ve had a huge number of hugely impressive, absolutely fantastic BSIPs, and we’ve had some others quite frankly that need work, big time.” Some will be asked to “have another go”.

Full report in next issue.

 
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