Not all Welsh bus services can be funded, minister warns

Not all bus services currently running in Wales will be funded by the Welsh government in future, the deputy transport minister Lee Waters has said.

The Welsh government is yet to confirm how it will fund the bus industry beyond the summer.

A pandemic-era emergency scheme has been extended, but only by three months.

Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price warned cutting support would be "catastrophic".

The comments in the Senedd come on the same day the Welsh government announced it was scrapping all major road projects.

Ministers say passenger numbers have not returned to pre-Covid levels, but that funding is not available in the budget to cover a shortfall in cash.

Mr Waters said the Welsh government would try to do what it could but it would not be enough "to keep the services as they currently stand".

Funding from the Bus Emergency Scheme (BES) was used to keep services running during the height of the pandemic.

Last Friday a joint statement from the Welsh government, councils and the bus industry said they "now need to transition away from emergency style funding".

The scheme was due to end in March 2023, but was extended for a further three months.

The statement said the extension would give the industry "short term stability" while ministers work with it to plan "bus networks which better suit the new travel patterns we have seen since the end of the pandemic".

It came days after he told the Senedd that the support would have to end "sooner rather than later" and that ministers were trying "our best to come up with a solution that does not see lots of routes being surrendered".

In First Minister's Questions (FMQs) in the Senedd Adam Price said the government's road review, that was announced later on Tuesday afternoon, "will be heralding its commitment to a historic shift in policy and priority from roads and public transport".

"So why is it that you announced late on Friday, that you were merely delaying a catastrophic cut in support for bus services from the end of March to the end of June, that will literally decimate what is for most people in most parts of Wales, the only form of public transport they have?"

Mr Price aired industry concerns that there could be cuts in bus services of "two thirds" or even the "mass de-registration of all routes".

Cutting funding "will decimate the bus network," he said.

Lesley Griffiths, minister for Welsh government business who took FMQs on Tuesday, said: "She added: "We are in a very difficult position in our budget. We haven't been able to confirm the bus industry funding package for the next financial year as yet".

Later in his statement on the roads review, Mr Waters said: "We're all very concerned about the situation that bus industry now faces."

He said there was "simply money not there in the short term to make up that shortfall" in bus funding, "which was never meant to be sustained. It was an emergency fund".

"We do need to safeguard the network as best we can. We managed the three months extension and we will be working closely with the industry and local authorities to try and do what we can.

"But clearly, it's not going to be enough to keep the services as they currently stand and that is a real shame."

In the Senedd last week Mr Waters said the Welsh government was supporting "a bus network that no longer has the same behaviours as the one that came before".

"So, in a sense, we're ossifying a bus network. Even the industry agrees that we do need to rationalise and re-look at the bus networks in Wales."