North Yorkshire County Council, which has seen some of the country’s sharpest cuts in public transport, has moved to dampen expectations over the impact of the government’s high-profile Bus Back Better scheme.
A meeting of North Yorkshire County Council’s executive heard the Department for Transport had last week warned the authority’s senior officers the bus services transformation scheme which Boris Johnson announced in February 2020 had been “heavily oversubscribed” with local authorities each submitting bids for more than 70 projects.
The alert follows Whitehall issuing a letter to councils in January highlighting how the £3bn budget for the “transformation” of buses had shrunk to £1.4bn for the next three years, adding that “prioritisation is inevitable”.
As a result, executive members were told while the county council had submitted a £116m bid for funding, £97m of which related to infrastructure improvements, it had started examining where it would prioritise any funding it may receive.
An officer told the meeting:
“The funding available that was announced in the beginning was £3bn. That has been dwindled as a result of Covid and the temporary funding that was provided to operators.
“The overall availability has reduced and therefore expectation has been dampened uniformly across the country, therefore if we are to get a number it will unlikely to be the £116m.”
The officer said if the council funding bid was unsuccessful it would still look to improve bus timetable information and work more closely with operators.
The meeting was also told officers were developing “a hierarchy” for any forthcoming funding, which started with capital schemes such as an improvement programme in Harrogate featuring the development of bus lanes, over and above the roll out of the Yorbus demand-responsive transport scheme to provide buses in rural areas.
Executive member for Stronger Communities Councillor David Chance responded:
“I would ask you to bear in mind the rural communities. We don’t have bus services. We haven’t had bus services, some of our villages, for over 20 years and it’s the possible improvement of that that concerns me more than anything.”
After the meeting, the authority’s opposition leader Councillor Stuart Parsons said while a large population lived in the Harrogate area, many more North Yorkshire residents lived outside it and any extra funding should be prioritised for lowering fares and creating routes where there are none.
The Independent group leader said the suggested priority of capital schemes in urban areas was “totally and utterly unacceptable”.
Coun Parsons said:
“Everything seems to pour into Harrogate. How is this going to help with the levelling up agenda with the smaller population centres yet again being deprived of funding? Levelling up between urban and rural areas should be the cornerstone of whatever the council is developing.
“This is also not a good way to move on the carbon reduction agenda as again they are forcing people into cars.”
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