Select committee: Transport Committee
Recommendation 21
3rd Report – Buses connecting communities
Published 13 Aug 2025
Addressed to Department for Transport
Transport Committee Buses connecting communities All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Department should set out a clear framework to ensure that local transport authorities have early access to operator data on patronage, fares and costs when undertaking a statutory assessment for bus franchising. The framework should include defined timescales for data provision, guidance to enable consistent data gathering and safeguards for commercially sensitive information, enabling informed decisions before commercial risks are taken. (Recommendation, Paragraph 78)
From: Transport Committee, 3rd Report – Buses connecting communities (HC 494), 13 August 2025
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 31 October 2025 (deadline 13 October 2025).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government welcomes the Committee's report and responds to each recommendation, agreeing with some in principle, committing to explore or consider others, and declining others, often citing the importance of local decision-making and a challenging fiscal environment.
- On funding, the Government "agrees with the Committee in principle" on the benefits of multi-year settlements, and "commit[s] to exploring the possibility of a five-year funding settlement for bus services with HMT as part of the next Spending Review".
- On ring-fencing funding for socially necessary services, it says it "would be challenging to identify an appropriate sum of money to ringfence" and believes service-level decisions should be taken locally.
- On a free bus pass for under-22s, it "recognises the benefits" but says there is "no funding available for such a scheme" in this Spending Review period, and will use learning from other schemes to inform future Spending Reviews.
- On a framework for demand-responsive transport, it does not consider that 18 months "would be a realistic timeframe", and says the first version of its best practice guidance is expected "later this year".