The Bus Partnership Fund in Scotland – which is currently subject to a heavily-criticised “pause” – has been terminated and will be succeeded by a new Bus Infrastructure Fund in FY2025/26, documents accompanying publication of the forthcoming Scottish Budget show.
That scheme’s allocation in FY2025/26 will be from £164.8 million for active and sustainable travel, which is down on a revised £185.4 million put to that line in FY2024/25. Also to be swallowed by the Bus Infrastructure Fund will be the Community Bus Fund.
Transport Scotland has confirmed that the Bus Partnership Fund has been concluded. The Bus Infrastructure Fund programme will be finalised once the Scottish Budget is agreed, but a spokesperson adds that the new scheme will focus “on delivering bus priority and supporting infrastructure measures to tackle the negative impact of congestion.”
Work already done via the Bus Partnership Fund will be built on by the mechanism. It will contribute to “making buses more attractive through quicker journeys for passengers and for operators to reinvest potential savings to provide further service improvements.”
Until now, the position of the Scottish Government had been that the Bus Partnership Fund was “paused” for FY2024/25. Coming of a Bus Infrastructure Fund is noted in a spreadsheet of Level 4 budget data published by the Scottish Government on 4 December.
The Bus Partnership Fund was announced in late-2020 to distribute more than £500 million into bus priority measures in Scotland. Only a small fraction of that was awarded before the pause. A freedom of information (FOI) response from the Scottish Government published on 11 October notes that £20.5 million had been spent by then.
That same response shows that the Bus Partnership Fund was paused because of a difficult financial situation that forced the Scottish Government “to make difficult choices” against a backdrop of increased costs-of-living and a real-terms fall in capital funding from the UK government.
In response to a question in the Scottish Parliament, Fiona Hyslop said on 21 February that the Bus Partnership Fund pause “presents an opportunity to recast bus priority work within a longer-term, more integrated public transport vision.”
Multiple bodies including the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT) Scotland and sustainable transport pressure group Transform Scotland had called for reinstatement of the Bus Partnership Fund in the FY2025/26 budget.
CPT Scotland Director Paul White has given a cautious welcome to the Bus Infrastructure Fund, describing it as “positive news,” although he notes that its structure and quantum remain to be disclosed. “But this indicates [that] ministers have recognised the importance of freeing buses from congestion,” Mr White says in a post on Twitter.
However, the FOI response includes an extract of minutes of a meeting on 11 January that observe how delivery and funding of bus priority infrastructure “will not be able to be simply restarted following a hiatus,” adding that “it will take months to remobilise resource and expertise to the current level if future funding is made available.”
Overall, transport in Scotland is allocated £4 billion in the FY2025/26 Scottish Budget. The concessionary fares total – which appears to include free inter-island ferry travel that is to be introduced for people aged under 22 – will increase to £414.5 million, up from £370.4 million in the current financial year.
However, support for bus services will decline by 10.8%. £49.5 million has been allocated against £55.5 million in FY2023/24. Such a drop has drawn a critical response from Transform Scotland.
