There is reason for optimism for the coach and bus sectors in the early moves from the new minority Welsh Government, writes Matt Williams
As many readers will know, the Welsh Government changed in early May; Plaid Cymru now leads a minority administration, and Reform UK are now the biggest opposition.
This is a historic shift, with the Labour Party no longer being the largest party in Wales for the first time in over 100 years.
It’s been a month since I joined the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT) in the role of Head of CPT Cymru and what a month it has been. Several of our members tell me that it’s never dull in this industry and, based on my experience, so far that’s true.
Plaid Cymru has a packed agenda for its first 100 days – and we are expecting a flurry of announcements before the end of the summer. We have already seen Transport for Wales engage the market on a north-south coach link based on a Plaid Cymru manifesto commitment.
Coach services have often been the poor relation when it comes to public funding for transport in Wales, so this is a particularly welcome signal from the new government.
CPT Cymru and several other industry voices have also already met with the new Deputy Minister for Transport, Mark Hooper, on fuel costs, where he was keen to engage with the industry on the meat of the issues very early on.
We have made the point that this is a priority for CPT members, who have absorbed price increases of as much as 30% at the pump since the Iran conflict began in February.
In the last week of June, Plaid Cymru published its first supplementary budget. This contained £10 million of spending commitments for coach and bus – £8m into extending our youth fares scheme and £2m for the North-South coach link.
We hope this is a promising sign for the new Welsh Government’s commitment to the coach and bus industry, although we are keen to ensure that youth fares are adequately reimbursed, with an appropriate exit strategy when the time comes to end the scheme.
The move towards bus franchising is proceeding at pace, and there’s no indication that Plaid Cymru will be seeking to change direction on this.
We are expecting consultation on the secondary legislation relating to contracting, TUPE, and information sharing to begin shortly and carry on over the summer.
The secondary legislation needs to be passed by the Senedd before Christmas to allow the current contracting timetable to proceed – with the tender process for South West Wales expected to begin in the first part of 2027.
As we head into summer, we’ve seen a positive set of tourism statistics for Wales, with overnight stays growing faster than anywhere else in the UK – a huge 17.4% jump in 2025 to over seven million.
As CPT Cymru looks ahead, we’re keen to help support this momentum by rolling out Coach Friendly status across Wales.
Finally, I’m looking ahead to engaging with our new Senedd. The new scrutiny committee for transport has been appointed, and CPT has begun engaging to ensure our members’ views are well represented.
I’m keen to impress upon the new Senedd that, while franchising is being rolled out, there is still a huge amount we can do outside of that to make life on coaches and buses better for passengers and the industry – not least on bus priority measures and congestion.
Research commissioned by CPT Cymru suggests that the best way to increase passenger numbers in Wales is to take action to increase bus speeds. Just a 10% increase in bus speed could see 2.8 million extra journeys taken every year on Wales’ buses.
