Lancashire’s Evening and Sunday bus fare offer, which sees fares reduced to just £1 for travel after 7pm in the evenings and all day on Sunday and bank holidays, is being amended.
The Lancashire Combined County Authority (LCCA), which is now the body responsible for local transport in Lancashire, will increase the fare to £2 with effect from 13th September, as the scheme, which currently costs the authority £5m per annum, has been deemed “unaffordable”.
A Report to a meeting of the Combined Authority taking place on 23rd June, states that it expects to receive £18.6m Local Bus Grant funding in the current financial year. The Grant is divided into “Capital Funding” (for building things) and “Revenue Funding” (for running them) and the revenue side of the Grant, which pays for the fares offer, is set to fall by £560,000. The Authority also has to make allowance for expected increases in the costs of contracted bus services as these are retendered and the cost of running the mandatory annual Transport Focus survey of user satisfaction.
Options
After consideration of a number of options, the LCCA will increase the evening and Sunday fare to £2 from 13th September until 31st March 2027, to save almost £1.2m in the current financial year. This will bring the end date of the offer into line with the ending of the Government’s £3 fare cap scheme. Any future local fares offers could then be reviewed in the light of what happens to the national fares cap.
Until then, the offer will continue to be available on all journeys within Lancashire, expect for those operated by Blackpool Transport and most Preston Bus services.
According to the report 3.5m journeys were made using the scheme in 2025/26 or 68,000 per week.
Lancaster Bus Users' Group 