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Outside of London, bus services have dropped by 50% since 2008, according to research by Friends of the Earth, external, with people on lower incomes and those without a car disproportionately affected.Bus use plummeted during the pandemic but even before then it was steadily declining in areas outside the capital.

The town - 40 miles to the west of London - was hit by Covid restrictions like everywhere else but the number of journeys on local bus services had been on the rise before the pandemic too.Reading is one of only five areas in England where the local bus company is owned by the council.Robert Williams, the chief executive of Reading Buses, says it means profits can be reinvested into services.“We're able to take a longer term view, we're not constantly being chased to make sure our profit margin is a certain level, because our brief is just to provide the best possible service we can,” he says.“You have local people that live and breathe the area, running the services and working out what should happen.

“Setting that up from scratch is no quick job.”In Reading, he points out, the council has owned the local bus company for more than 100 years.Labour claims its plans would require no additional central government funding.But Mr Williams is sceptical over whether councils, which are facing huge financial challenges, have the money to set up their own bus companies at the moment.To improve services, he says, also requires investment.In Reading, he says bus services get very little subsidy from the council as it benefits from its location as a busy commuter town.“If we tried to replicate this in the middle of the countryside, we clearly wouldn't be able to sustain the same kind of network,” he adds.

Paul Swinney, director of research and policy at the Centre for Cities think tank, says there are easier ways to achieve the benefits of greater control over bus services than full public ownership.

If a company is publicly owned, it is the taxpayer that is taking on the risk if it goes bust, he points out.Instead, the think tank supports expanding the franchising system which is in place in London and has also been adopted in Greater Manchester.Liverpool City Region, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire are set to follow suit.Mr Swinney says under a franchise model councils and mayors still have control over bus routes and can ensure these are integrated into a cohesive network with other forms of public transport like trains.They can also keep hold of fares and choose to subsidise less profitable routes which are still vital for certain groups.Although he says this won’t necessarily make single journeys cheaper, it is easier to bring in daily caps across the whole network.The only difference to full public ownership is that it is private companies running the services.

During the recent mayoral campaign, then-West Midlands Conservative mayor Andy Street attacked his Labour opponent’s plan to take buses back under public control, saying the party had not said where the money to do this would come from.Labour's Richard Parker, who won the contest, has pledged to build a "London-style integrated transport network" to make buses more affordable, reliable and frequent.

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