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Bus Services: Concessions

Volume 462: debated on Tuesday 10 July 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how much was spent by her Department on bus subsidy in the North East of England, broken down by (a) local authority and (b) bus operator in each of the last 10 years. (147305)

Since 1998, the Department has provided grants to local transport authorities through the Rural Bus Subsidy Grant, Rural and Urban Bus Challenge and Kickstart schemes. The table shows the total paid (in £s) to each authority in the North East region, and the regional total, for each year since the introduction of these grant schemes.

£

Authority

1998-99

1999-2000

2000-01

2001-02

2002-03

2003-04

2004-05

2005-06

2006-07

Durham

654,510

899,816

604,510

771,913

1,081,482

1,308,014

1,601,018

1,326,172

989,295

Northumberland

306,850

370,808

538,043

680,503

1,300,344

1,970,099

1,425,497

1,113,527

1,113,904

Tyne and Wear

96,151

913,758

309,071

354,768

671,523

1,196,086

1,412,614

1,303,923

1,159,038

Darlington

31,912

31,584

41,659

61,742

70,668

602,155

364,605

317,201

100,726

Hartlepool

16,522

16,019

16,872

21,544

176,102

102,986

564,494

275,430

223,181

Middlesbrough

7,779

11,542

11,542

14,738

12,542

17,224

67,741

208,437

18,889

Redcar and Cleveland

30,713

56,497

68,039

77,142

82,573

84,311

162,490

148,156

184,245

Stockton-on-Tees

22,904

33,832

45,832

55,201

154,625

156,785

259,197

308,665

213,860

Total

1,167,341

2,333,856

1,635,568

2,037,551

3,549,859

5,437,660

5,857,656

5,001,511

4,003,138

The majority of local authority support for bus services is funded from the Government’s unhypothecated Revenue Support Grant and from other sources.

The Department also provides Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) directly to operators of local bus services. Bus routes cross local authority borders and it is not possible to allocate BSOG payments to different local authority areas with sufficient accuracy; information on payments to individual operators is commercially confidential. However, we estimate that BSOG payments to operators in the North East region now total around £24 million annually.