Andy Burnham’s promise to commuters to keep the £2 Bee Network fare cap despite national increase

Andy Burnham has pledged to keep his promise to maintain the £2 cap on bus fares on the Bee Network. 

It comes after in the budget announced an increase to the cap across England to £3 at the start of 2025. 

Keir Starmer has argued that the national cap had to increase as the previous government has only allocated funds until the end of 2024. But Andy Burnham has said Greater Manchester “is in a different position to other areas across England when it comes to bus funding and bus fares” because of re-regulation.

He said: “We understand it is easier and cheaper to maintain a £2 cap in a regulated system and expensive for the government to subsidise it in a deregulated one, but they have maintained the principle of a cap.”

Burnham’s announcement comes as part of a wider update about his flagship Bee Network scheme, with the mayor aiming to introduce a “simpler, flatter fare structure” that would resemble London’s contactless system.

Low fare

“We hope that the measures we are taking will continue the increase in patronage we have seen since the introduction of the original £2 cap in September 2022 and the launch of the Bee Network in September 2023,” he said.

“The more that people use the system, the easier it will be for us to sustain the low-fare structure.”

As part of this announcement he cautioned that it “is only by the middle of 2025 when we have completed phase one of the Bee Network, and we know the level of government funding we have, that we will be in a position to judge the financial outlook for the new system”.