UK – The British government has announced that, over the next five years, it will invest GBP15.6bn in public transportation in urban and suburban areas of England outside of London, which it claims is the largest ever investment in local transport made by the state.

While the bulk of the money will be spent on improving rail and tram links within and between urban zones, a substantial part has been earmarked for establishing new bus connections and adding more buses to existing routes. The English regions which will benefit the most from the investment are the North and the Midlands. Thanks to the investment, the government claims that spending on local transport in 2029/30 will be more than double that spent in 2024/25.

The planned investments include the following:

• £2.1bn in the county of West Yorkshire, which will be partly spent on building new bus stations in Bradford and Wakefield; 

• £1.5bn in the county of South Yorkshire, of which £350m will be used to renew fleets in Sheffield, Doncaster, and Rotherham by 2027 and across the whole of the county by 2029; 

• £1.6bn in the Liverpool City Region, of which £100m will be invested in three new bus rapid transit routes; money will also be spent on a brand-new fleet of buses for St Helens and the Wirral in 2026 and Sefton, Knowsley, and North and South Liverpool in 2027; 

• £2.0bn for the East Midlands Combined Authority, some of which will be spent on improvements to bus routes.

The announcement was made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, at Mellor’s bus plant in Rochdale. GBP86m has already been committed by the government to Greater Manchester’s ‘Bee Network’; according to the funding plans outlined above, a total of GBP2.5bn will be invested in the region over the next five years, covering the purchase of, among other things, 1,000 new electric buses.

Gustavo Marqueta-Siibert, who is CCO of Woodall Nicholson (the parent of Mellor), commented:

We were honoured to host the Chancellor, Mayor Burnham, and Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander for this announcement. At Mellor, we build buses that go where others can’t—connecting communities that are too often overlooked. This investment signals real change for people who rely on public transport most.