Surrey County Council has been awarded £7.8m to further improve and protect local buses.

The council will work with bus operators over the coming month to allocate the funding which is likely to generate more frequent buses, more evening and weekend services and reduced fares for young people to help them access education, training and employment.

The investment will also be used to help ten Surrey bus services with low passenger numbers, to increase their patronage so that people who rely on them for essential services can continue to access their local bus.

Matt Furniss, Cabinet Member for Transport, Infrastructure and Growth at Surrey County Council said,

“I’m delighted that Surrey has been selected as one of the local authorities to receive this essential funding which will help us to build upon our own significant investment and encourage more people to take the bus."

“We’re investing in making our buses greener including £32.3m for more ultra-low and zero emission buses and £6.3m for more ultra-low and zero emission community transport minibuses. A further £9m is being invested in bus priority measures to ensure buses turn up on time, and £1.4m in improving information for passengers at bus stops."

“We also recently launched the Surrey LINK card which gives young people half-price bus travel and expanded our on-demand Surrey Connect bus services, giving more options to travel by bus for our residents.”