Question reference: S6W-03147
- Asked by: Rona Mackay, MSP for Strathkelvin and Bearsden, Scottish National Party
- Date lodged: 20 September 2021
-
Current status: Answered by Graeme Dey on 1 October 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government how much each local authority will receive of the £42 million of funding between 4 October 2021 and 31 March 2022 to enable bus operators to maintain services while patronage recovers from the effects of COVID-19.
Answer
Covid Support Grant Restart (CSG-R) funding for bus is available to support eligible organisations, such as bus operators and local transport authorities, which are running local registered bus services, and are able to increase service mileage up to 95% of pre COVID levels. Where a local transport authority (LTA) runs local bus services directly it is eligible for CSG-R funding for those services. To date, the only local authority in receipt of CSG-R funding is Scottish Borders Council.
The amount of funding each operator – including eligible local authorities – will receive depends on the actual gap between the costs of running the services and revenue received over the funding period and so is not known at this point. A condition of the funding is that participating operators are required to cooperate with LTAs in planning services and to take steps to respond positively and quickly to reasonable requests from LTAs to amend service patterns, hours or levels of provision.