National Bus Strategy

Kents bus future

In March 2021, the government published a National Bus Strategy which set out to improve bus services across the UK after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The strategy requires all local transport authorities and bus operators to create a Bus Service Improvement Plan which will act as the vision for how we are going to try to improve bus services in Kent in the next few years.

Discussions with bus operators, other parties and feedback from the public has been used to develop Kent’s Bus Service Improvement Plan and create an Enhanced Partnership that covers the whole of Kent. The Enhanced Partnership is comprised of three schemes: one for East Kent, West Kent and Kent Thameside, and has been created to service all of Kent by using the Bus Service Improvement Plan.

In response to the National Bus Strategy, we submitted our Bus Service Improvement Plan at the end of October 2021. In April 2022, we learned that we had received an indicative allocation of £35m to use to carry out the improvement plan.

So far, we have received £18.9m of funding from the initial budget which was received at the end of March 2023 and is being used to carry out the initiatives outlined within the Bus Service Improvement Plan.