£17m of CBSSG for tendered services

Buses

The DFT has allocated £16.8m of the £254m Covid-19 Bus Service Support ‘Restart’ Grant (CBSSG Restart) for England to cover revenue losses on tendered services. 

The funding will be paid to local authorities. Councils can keep the grant if they receive the revenue from tendered services (gross cost contracts), or they can pass the grant to operators if they keep the fare revenues (net cost contracts).    

The DfT delayed a decision on how much to allocate to tendered services until it had completed a review of how the £21.5m in the first round of CBSSG was used. There has been concern about the fairness of the allocation process to local authorities and whether operators have received payments due from the grant stream. 

A DfT spokeswoman said: “Tendered services will receive funding from local transport authorities in a similar way through the CBSSG Restart scheme as was done through the original CBSSG scheme. Authorities are set to receive around £16.8m for the eight-week period 9 June - 3 August.”