(16 Apr 2026, 8:41 pm)L469 YVK wrote IMO, them routes mentioned shouldn't be getting any BSIP money.

As much as they get pelters on somethings, Arriva Northumbria & Northumberland CC have shown how the money should be spent and not on 'goldmines'.

I think how best to use the BSIP funding was a really tricky policy decision. It was unclear what successor funding would become available, with every reason to think it would be at a considerably lower rate. So a challenge to decide how to do things that would result in a sustainable continuing benefit. 

The services that Northumberland has used BSIP for seem mostly things that will always require indefinite funding. Things like services to Wooler or between Morpeth and the airport fills gaps in the network, and will find new passengers, but it would be miraculous if they ever got close to covering their costs. Nothing wrong with that in principle, but it means that if there is no successor funding the services have no future at all, so the new users would be left high and dry. 

The "kickstart" things Nexus did with GNE and Stagecoach is a different strategy that matches the time-limited profile of the BSIP grant. Temporary funding to rebuild frequencies that had been eroded during Covid, with the hope that they would regain the patronage that had made those higher frequencies viable pre-Covid. I'd be surprised if the operators were not required to contribute, too, and these will have been the services that in their commercial judgement were most likely to succeed. Even if for whatever reason the higher frequency can't be sustained, at least passengers won't be left with no service. 

Perhaps a case of "horses for course", and both are reasonable strategies, reflecting the different circumstances of Northumberland and Nexus?