Somerset council officers and bus operators have called on the government to end uncertainty over the future funding for bus services across the county.

The Department for Transport (DfT) introduced a £2 fare cap for bus services in January 2023, which ensures that no single journey made by bus across Somerset will cost more than £2 to undertake.

The cap is currently due to expire on December 31, with reports surfacing in the national press that chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves is expected to cut funding for the cap or scrap it entirely as part of her first budget on October 30.

Somerset bus operators have joined forces with campaigners and officers at Somerset Council to call on the government to keep funding for local bus services, citing a rise in passenger numbers since this and other subsidies were introduced.

The issue was discussed by the council's bus advisory board when it met in Taunton on Tuesday morning (October 15).

In addition to the nationally-funded £2 fare cap, Somerset has implemented other fare subsidies through its bus services improvement plan (BSIP), which received around £12m of DfT funding in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.

While much of this funding is for capital projects (such as the delivery of the new Taunton transport hub and a smaller-scale new interchange in Somerton), some of it can be used for day-to-day spending to bring down the cost of tickets for passengers.

Natasha Bates, the council's service commissioning manager for passenger transport, said that the lower fares at Taunton park and ride (£1 for a single journey and £2 for a return) had led to an increase in people using the service.

She said: "The aim of that was to try and retain as many passengers as we possibly could.

"The patronage has grown from the introduction of this fare and has pretty much stabilised. It appears to be doing very well."

Ms Bates added that the Taunton fare zone introduced in December 2022 (whereby any single journey across Taunton would only cost £1) had worked "almost too well", leading to a review of fare and an increase being implemented in June 2024.

She said: "Once the £1 came in, we've seen a steady increase in patronage.

"We had to review the scheme within the funding we had available to us, and we had to realign the fare – so it's now a £1.50 fare within the Taunton area. We haven't seen the results of that increase as yet."

Rebecca Mantyk, operations director of FirstBus South, said there had been a sharp decline in passenger numbers since the fare increase, but that numbers were now stabilising following this change.

She said: "With regard to the £1.50 fare scheme, since the change in June we have seen a decline of around ten per cent in passengers numbers prior to this – but we have been holding those numbers since then."

David Redgewell, representing the Campaign for Better Transport, said that a fall in passenger numbers may be driven by poor reliability of existing services, not just the cost of a ticket.

He said: "Passenger numbers, from what I've seen and monitored in Taunton, rely on punctuality and reliability.

"If services are getting cancelled, then we're going to haemorrhage passengers. We need to get stability into the network, and there's a big issue in Taunton.

"If drivers are stuck in traffic, that's one thing – the greenwaves will help that. But otherwise, it's about making sure inspectors are on the Parade making sure those vehicles run."

As part of the BSIP, the council intends to spend more than £4.7m on delivering new 'greenwaves', making it easier for bus services to reach the town centre from the west, north and east through bus lanes, signalling changes and other measures.

Work on the eastern greenwave will begin in mid-November, with the council upgrading the existing signals at the Hurdle Way junction.

Mr Redgewell speculated that the fare cap may be kept but would rise by up to £1 per single journey as part of the budget.

He said: "In the work I've seen from the DfT, they've asked the operators to come up with two scenarios – one for an increase to £2.50, the other to £3.

"The department is working those through and they will go forward to the budget at the end of the month.

"I understand there will be a further announcement of bus service funding from the secretary of state.

"I wouldn't say we're going to fall off a cliff edge – I think Louise Haigh and Simon Lightfoot get the situation, and so does the prime minister."

Sunita Mills, the council's head of transportation, said she had not received any clarity from the DfT on the future funding for bus service improvements.

She said: "Any time that we've had the opportunity to put feedback to the DfT in recent months, we've been saying how much we value the BSIP funding, the £2 fare cap and the other funding that's come into the bus industry.

"We've been trying to push the agenda with ministers, but we've heard nothing from them thus far."

Peter Fairey, operations director at Southwest Coaches, added: "We're all sat here on tenterhooks, really, working out what's going to happen in the future.

"We are holding passenger numbers, and we have no plans other than small tweaks to our network to try and make it more punctual and reliable.

"We wait to see what the government does and hopefully on October 30 we might have some idea.

"It's ridiculous – we can't plan, we can't do anything because we don't know what's going to happen with something which has such a massive effect on our funding, realistically."

Transport secretary Louise Haigh MP stated in the House of Commons on October 10 that the government would "consolidate funding" for local bus services, though she did not commit to any specific changes to the fare cap.

She said: "The underfunding of bus services over a decade has led to the cancellation and scrapping of thousands of bus routes across the country, and passenger numbers have fallen over the last 40 years.

Simon Lightfood MP, parliamentary under-secretary for transport, confirmed in the House on the same date that the £2 bus fare cap was being evaluated as part of a wider review in the run-up to the Labour government's first budget on October 30.

He said: "We are considering the benefits that have accrued as a result of the £2 bus fare and what steps we will take next. Of course, that will all form part of the spending review."