Following the public consultation exercise Nottinghamshire County Council carried out last summer the Government has now confirmed Nottinghamshire; including Greater Nottingham, has been allocated indicative funding of £30.1m to improve bus travel.
The Department for Transport (DfT) funding to level up local bus services is the latest award from the Government’s bus transformation programme.
Councillor Neil Clarke MBE, Chairman of the Transport and Environment committee at Nottinghamshire County Council said: “The Government’s funding announcement for local bus improvements is fantastic news and is totally in line with the Council’s aspirations to improve bus travel for local people.
“Our officers will now work on securing the indicative funding alongside working with bus operators to develop our proposals and look at the best way to spend this money. This will include addressing the issues that came through strongly in our consultation such as integrated ticketing and travel times.”
The bus service improvement proposals follow the Government’s national bus strategy, Bus Back Better https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bus-back-better in which local transport authorities were asked to publish a plan to improve local bus provision.
There are two plans for Nottinghamshire which include, Greater Nottingham working in partnership with Nottingham City Council and the areas which make up the rest of Nottinghamshire.
Around 3.5k residents and businesses across the county responded to last summer’s consultation which that were submitted to the Government for funding bids.
Councillor Clarke added: “I am very supportive of improving transport options across the county as part of our commitment to supporting people to health, work and leisure. This funding will also help with our environmental aspirations in reducing our carbon footprint.
“We already have a well-loved bus service across Nottinghamshire with customer satisfaction rates at 94%. With the additional funding we’ll be able to build on the £4.1m we already invest in supporting bus services and deliver a first-class bus network for thousands of passengers across the county.”
