St Helens buses are back in public hands. Will Wirral follow in October as planned?
Liverpool City Region is the second English authority to take its buses back into public control. The rest of its network is due by the end of 2027.
What happened
The first phase of the Liverpool City Region’s franchised bus network launched in St Helens on Sunday , giving the combined authority control of routes, timetables and service standards, with Wirral to follow later in the autumn and Knowsley, Liverpool and Sefton by the end of 2027.
The government committed £86.3m to the region’s buses until 2029. The Department for Transport confirmed the switch the next day and added a share of a one-off £3m fund for mayors who take control of their buses. The region’s buses carried about 93 million passenger journeys last year.
Liverpool is the second English city region to take its buses back from private operation, using the franchising powers in the Bus Services Act 2017. Greater Manchester was the first.
Under franchising the authority now sets routes, timetables, fares and service standards in St Helens. It pays the bus companies against targets for reliability, punctuality and cleanliness.
From the first day some routes went from every two hours to every hour, with extra evening and Sunday buses and a new X3 express to Liverpool John Lennon Airport. Arriva stopped running fourteen groups of routes between Liverpool and St Helens on the same day.
The authority named for Wirral. It said in July that Wirral would follow in October, with Liverpool, Knowsley and Sefton by the end of 2027. Go North West won the Wirral contract in January. No start day for Wirral has been published yet.
Sources: Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (2), gov.uk, Liverpool Echo
The Pattern
We looked at every stage of bus franchising that an English mayoral authority has launched since 2023. For each we asked whether it started in the month the authority had named in public. There are four: three in Greater Manchester and now St Helens. Authorities that have decided to franchise but not yet launched are left out. All four started in the month named. The newest are shown first.
Show the other 2 cases
The Read
History points to an October start. Franchising dates sit in signed contracts with named bus companies, which is why all four English launches so far came in the month set for them. Go North West has had the Wirral contract since January. The market sits below 80 because the authority has still not published a day, and a record of four cases leaves a lot of room for error.
The doubt is size and wording. Wirral carries more passengers than St Helens. In July the authority named October, but its September releases said only that Wirral would follow later in the autumn, and that is how a delay usually begins. Starting on time is also a narrow test. Every stage so far started on time, and the first two Greater Manchester stages still ran badly for weeks afterwards.
Timetable notices that show a first day in November would settle it the other way. So would a shortage of drivers like the one that hit the second Greater Manchester stage.
Disclaimer
Hunch works only from sources that are publicly available, and publishes on the basis of analysis of that material. We do not form an editorial opinion or take sides, we give a simpler and wider view of news that already exists. If information in a source we used was inaccurate, distorted, or later disputed but had already entered our analysis, Hunch accepts no liability for that. Predictions are not advice. Phase 1 markets use Hunch Points, not money.
Published by Hunch under the Editorial Code. Complaints and corrections: /contact/.