Tobyn Hughes, Managing Director, Transport North East, said: “This announcement is great news for the region. The government has clearly recognised how important bus and Metro services are to the North East.

“The award of £7.3m of funding for the Metro will allow services to be fully maintained over the next few months.

“Furthermore, I am very pleased that the government agrees that our Bus Service Improvement Plan is worthy of major investment. We put forward a very strong plan, developed collaboratively with bus operators, Nexus, local authority partners, and a range of other supporters of bus services. This has been recognised by a funding award of £163.5 million over three years. This breaks down as £73,758,353 capital to prioritise buses on busy routes, and £89,762,819 revenue to support improved fares and services for local people – one of the highest allocations in the country. This funding will allow us to dramatically transform bus services across the North East, greatly improving the bus network for millions of passengers and encouraging more people to make the switch to bus.

“We will continue our work on the Enhanced Partnership Scheme in order to unlock the payment of the indicative funding as soon as possible.”

See the full Department for Transport announcement here.