Leeds buses on 'funding cliff-edge' as over a dozen vital services face drastic cuts and cancellations

The region's transport committee met on Friday (February 10) in a bid to ramp up the pressure on ministers and urged that action be taken to protect these vital links, which communities rely on.

This follows a letter from West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin to the Department for Transport earlier this week calling for clarity around the government’s bus recovery grant.

The government grant, designed to help bus operators and Local Transport Authorities mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on bus use, is set to end next month. But bus operators have warned that there could be drastic cuts to local services as a result because passenger numbers haven’t reached pre-pandemic levels yet.

A meeting of West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s Transport Committee last week heard how potentially dozens of bus services across the region could be either reduced or scrapped altogether, if the government fails to extend its bus recovery fund scheme.

A paper presented to the committee warns that bus operators are working on the assumption that no extension to funding will be available, which means they could:

Remove seven services in full Withdraw part of the route of four services 16 services where they would reduce frequency 15 services where they would remove journeys at certain times of the day or week

Chair of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s Transport Committee, Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe said: “The services people rely on are facing a funding cliff-edge.

"This dithering from Government means bus companies cannot commit to delivering the services everybody relies on from the end of next month. Passengers need to know that their bus to get to work is still going to be there beyond the end of March. These services are desperately needed across West Yorkshire.

“We want to encourage people to use buses, but how can we do that when funding from Government is piecemeal, hand to mouth and month by month. We can’t have services being cut left, right and centre.”

The bus recovery grant was previously extended for six months in October, providing an extra £130million of financial support for bus services.