Savage bus cuts ‘unnecessary’

Savage cuts to bus services across the country were unnecessary because cash was available in a Whitehall budget, a damning report says.

The Department for Transport (Dft) is accused of forcing deep reductions to bus grants, which triggered the axeing of scores of routes and steep fare hikes - only to end up with £543 million to spare. The underspend had to be returned to the Treasury, attracting sharp criticism from the all-party Commons transport committee.

Louise Ellman, the committee’s Labour chairwoman, added: “This is quite extraordinary. The department got its sums wrong and the cuts to bus services didn’t need to happen. Meanwhile, those cuts have caused great difficulty to many people — leading to services being cut back and people finding it difficult to get to work or college..”

The same committee has previously highlighted how bus services have been hit by a triple whammy of:

::A 28 per cent reduction in funding to local councils, combined with the end of ring-fencing of grants for bus services.

::A shake-up of the highly-popular free-travel scheme for pensioners, which means the cash is no longer ring-fenced.

::A 20 per cent cut in the Bus Service Operators’ Grant (BSOG) paid to the bus companies.

The cuts — introduced last April — are estimated to have taken up to £300 million a year from bus services.

The sum is significantly less than the £543 million underspend handed back by the DfT, which accepted a budget cut of £683 million when the Coalition came to power.

In total the underspend was over a billion pounds in 2010-11, though £486 million was recycled into other transport projects, leaving £543 million to be surrendered to the Treasury.

Previously capped fares are expected to soar by 24 per cent above inflation by the end of 2014.