The government's National Bus Strategy for England, "Bus Back Better", invited local authorities and bus operators to develop proposals to improve bus services through Bus Service Improvement Plans, which would be granted funding from a £3bn pot. The Plans were to be "ambitious" and were meant to transform bus services throughout England with measures such as more bus priority schemes, more frequent services, lower fares, better buses and improved publicity and information. They were also set to transform the way in which buses are regulated, away from a "competitive" model to one where "co-operation" was more improtant.
Lancashire County Council, in a joint bid with Blackburn-with-Darwen Unitary Authority, submitted a bid for £170 million's worth of improvements but has been informed that it will recieve just £34.2m out of a reduced total of £1.1bn (down from the promised £3bn) of government money.
Independent analysis of the 79 bids submitted found that the cost of fully-funding all of them would have been somewhere between £7bn and £10bn, far outstripping the £3bn budget. That budget, however, has been progressively reduced since its announcement, with much of it going on emergency Bus Serrvice Recovery Grants to keep existing bus services operating through the pandemic.
