The road to good growth runs through buses

August 18 2026

Kathryn Pulham is CPT President

There’s no doubt about it - we have a dedicated believer in the importance of buses as Prime Minister. Public transport has been a key catalyst in Andy Burnham’s elevation to Downing Street, and our industry is front and centre of national politics.

How can we take advantage of this? What can we, as an industry, do to convince the new UK Government that buses and coaches can be used as a route to deliver Burnham’s new mantra – good growth in every postcode?

The first thing to recognise is that we’re not always going to be on the same page as a Prime Minister whose ardent commitment to fare caps and franchising could mean a narrowing in the path ahead of commercial freedom for bus.

There are tough discussions to be had on those issues. But a key to political leverage is to find areas of common ground. And of those, I see plenty for CPT to highlight.

Within a three year window before the next election, the Prime Minister wants to deliver a noticeable improvement to households in cost of living, he wants to boost local economies outside the south-east and he aims to tackle the number of young people classified as ‘NEETs’ – not in education, employment or training. The bus and coach industry can help with all three.

We need to hammer home the everyday, on-the-ground impact of bus and coach. For every £10 spent on local high streets, a pound is spent by shoppers who arrive by bus. A coach arriving in a town every day will deliver £1 million of economic value over the course of the year.

If we’re talking about regional development, the figures are compelling - in rural economies, buses deliver £7.1 billion of spending a year. Coach operators deliver a disproportionate number of jobs outside major conurbations, with small and medium sized local operators truly proving their value in Scotland, Wales, the West Country and the North of England. And we’re an industry that employs more people than the entire UK armed forces.

What do we need from Government to make our sector prosper? Perhaps the first and foremost priority is to get our vehicles moving faster. Recent research for CPT by Chris Cheek laid out an economic prize of £5 billion if we could just up the speed of buses by 10%.

There are three levers to pull to make this happen – more dedicated roadspace, better priority schemes and improved co-ordination of streetworks. And on the coach front, access to bus lanes needs to be the default, rather than a privilege. Given Burnham’s belief in the power of bus, there is room for optimism that we now have a Prime Minister who will listen to these arguments.

To get our industry to fulfil its potential, we need to make the case for sustained, ongoing investment in the zero emission transition. The broader political consensus around net zero may have broken down, and the shift towards electric cars may have stalled, but there is literally nobody on the political spectrum who is arguing that decarbonisation of buses and coaches is a bad idea.

And we must build on the momentum delivered for coaches by April’s game changing guidance from the Department for Transport which asked all English councils to consider the industry’s value in their local transport plans – offering national political backing for decisions around better pick-up and drop-off points and initiatives to ‘pump prime’ new coach services.

Coaches are crucial in meeting Burnham’s goals – they are part of the infrastructure that connects communities and allows people to access opportunity. A genuinely integrated passenger transport strategy aimed at delivering economic growth simply must involve them. And we can offer much, as an industry, to the Prime Minister’s drive for more opportunities to access technical skills – particularly in engineering.

We’ve come a long way over the last few years. But it is still the case that public funding for buses is typically lower in the UK than in the rest of Europe. The can-do commercial spirit and entrepreneurial zeal of CPT members keeps Britain moving.

With a new Government in office with real commitment to local transport, there is a genuine opportunity to change attitudes in local authorities and to get bus friendly policies rooted in town halls.

Yes, we need to make the point that one size doesn’t fit all in bus regulation. And we need to remind ministers of the relevance of market forces in setting prices. But overall, Burnham can be an ally for buses and coaches of all colour – not just the yellow ones with a bee logo on the front.