Expensive buses are leaving young people stranded

If you are young and out of work, education or training, the next few weeks could be pivotal for you. With over a million young people (aged 16 – 24) not in education, employment, or training (Neet), the much-anticipated Milburn review is due in November to publish its recommendations for how this government can address the challenge. Alan Milburn himself has remarked in the media that this government should ​“redistribute money from the welfare system to more employment support”. This statement may have already influenced the design of Chancellor Healey’s budget next week.

The interim Milburn review, published earlier this year, reported that one in eight young people are ​“Neet”. This statistic was linked to a range of failings and barriers, key among which was the issue of transport.

The report highlighted transport as a significant practical barrier for young people in accessing work, particularly for those without a driving licence or access to a car. National Travel Survey data backs this up. Around 15% of young people (around 170,000) in households without a car report a transport barrier to work, compared with 6% of those in households with one. A range of practical barriers, including upfront and running costs, make cars inaccessible to many young people, leaving them reliant on public transport, mainly buses, to access work, training or education. Given these costs, reducing the cash generosity of social security for Neets young people may end up making it harder for them to take up employment support and opportunities, however generous that support may be.

In his first week in office, Andy Burnham reinstated the £2 cap on single bus tickets throughout 2027. This will make things much cheaper for bus users, but when this policy arrives it will only mark a return to a previous measure in place from 2023 to 2024 in England. Indeed, the £2 price cap only partially addresses the dramatic pace of price increases in bus and coach fares over the past 25 years, which have risen 150% faster than inflation. 

Young people use buses more than any other age group, often relying on public transport to reach their first job, traineeship or course, or even just an interview. Once secured, these positions are usually paid poorly, or not at all, meaning the cost of living is felt acutely amongst young people. This means that the price and availability of buses can prevent young people accessing opportunities.

Bus fares are a barrier to opportunity in England

We know that tackling the cost of public transport can make a big difference. In Scotland, after the introduction of free bus travel for under-22s, the share of young people saying cost prevented them from getting the bus fell from 51% to 20%. In Wales, a £1 bus fare cap offered to five-21-year-olds was introduced in 2025 and was recently extended until March 2027 after being deemed a success. In Europe, free or ultra-cheap young people’s bus travel is widely available, including in Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Austria, Belgium (regional), and soon Denmark. 

The House of Commons transport committee concluded that limited services and high fares make it harder for young people to reach college, training and entry-level jobs, and recommended piloting a similar scheme outside Scotland. This was rejected by the government. This means that in England today, all pensioners  (and in London, all over 59 year-olds) can access free off-peak bus travel, but young people cannot. 

Fare discounts are offered to some young people in England but vary considerably by council or combined authority area. At NEF, we have mapped youth bus fare discounts for 16- to 24-year-olds across all 153 upper-tier councils in England, including combined authorities. The analysis draws on Bus Service Improvement Plans, Local Transport Plans, Enhanced Partnership schemes and council and bus company websites. For each council and each year of age, we recorded whether a discount is open to every person that age, or only to students, apprentices or jobseekers. We also recorded whether it is backed by the council or offered by an individual bus company. Results were then weighted by local 2021 Census data on young people not in employment or full-time education (used here as a proxy for Neet). We excluded price caps available to all age groups, such as the current national bus £3 fare cap and mayoral flat fares. 

What our analysis suggests is that three in four young people out of work or education (75%) live somewhere with no council-backed youth discount open to everyone their age. If we include tickets sold by individual bus companies this falls to 69%, but those tickets are usually valid only on one particular company’s buses.

Outside of London, 71% of Neet young people live where there is no council-backed open-to-all youth discount, and for 63% there aren’t even bus company discounts. In London, free bus travel is available through the 16+ Zip card covering every 16 – 17-year-old, but from 18 it is only available to those in education or training. As a result, 97% of Neet young Londoners have no unconditional discounts.

The key dividing line in access to bus discounts is age. 86% of Neets are aged 19 or over and not eligible for typical child/​youth fare offers. If you are 17, there are 114 councils that will offer you a council-backed open-to-all youth discount. But once you turn 19 this falls to just 48. At the age of 21, there are only 38 councils and at 22 only nine. This means that, among 22 – 24-year-old Neets in England, nine in 10 (91%) live somewhere with no open-to-all youth discount available to them. Only four areas covering nine councils identified offer an open-to-all discount at that age: West Yorkshire (MCard, discounted fares for 19 – 25), Hertfordshire (SaverCard, discounted fares for 20 – 25), Cambridgeshire and Peterborough (Tiger pass, £1 fares for under 25s) and Cornwall (discounted 19 – 25 tickets). South Yorkshire also includes bus company specific 18 – 22 card.

Young people out of work and education in coastal areas are the worst off. 83% live somewhere without a council-backed youth discount open to everyone their age, against 68% elsewhere (excluding London). At 22 – 24, this rises to 98%, against 88% elsewhere (excluding- London). Including bus companies’ own youth tickets, 75% of coastal Neet young people still have no discount open to everyone their age, against 61% elsewhere (excluding London).

The bus discount offer to Neets is better in six of the mayoral combined authorities with long-standing transport powers (Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, West Midlands, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and the north east), where 54% of young Neets live somewhere with no council-backed discount open to all, compared to the 75% in England overall. In other mayoral areas, such as Tees Valley, York and North Yorkshire, this rises to 67%, still far lower than the rate in areas without a mayor, where it rises to 83%. Many schemes are also time limited, even though since April, bus funding has been allocated on a multi-year basis, with councils and combined authorities deciding how much of the pot is distributed to youth discounts, or services.

Many youth bus discounts are only for students, apprentices or other specific groups, which, by definition, most young people out of work and education cannot use. Outside London, enrolling in a course or apprenticeship unlocks a youth bus discount for approximately half of Neet young people who currently have none (54%). Roughly half of this comes through council-backed student and apprenticeship transport schemes and half through bus companies’ own student tickets. In London, Transport for London’s 18+ Oyster card covers every student, yet it applies to season tickets only. London’s Jobcentre Plus Travel Discount reaches only 18 – 24-year-olds claiming job seekers allowance or universal credit who have been unemployed for 13 – 39 weeks.

Still, even counting bus company, student and jobseeker schemes, 32% of young Neets aged 22 – 24 years old have no bus discount of any kind, 54% in coastal areas.

Provision of buses is also a major barrier

Using the Department for Transport (DfT)’s metric of public transport connectivity to employment data, we find coastal areas have the weakest public transport access to jobs (Figure 1), with just 0.3% of coastal left-behind communities (here grouped in Lower Layer Super Output Areas — LSOAs) and 2.6% of other coastal communities falling within the most-connected quintile.

Figure 1. Least connected areas to jobs by public transport are in coastal areas

Rates of young people not in employment, education or training are higher in ​“left-behind” areas (areas with high deprivation and few community assets). Among 16 – 24-year-olds, the Neet rate is 24% in coastal left-behind neighbourhoods and 22% in other left-behind neighbourhoods, compared to the 13% average across England. Put another way, 42% in coastal left-behind areas and 45% of Neet young people in other coastal areas, live in poorly connected neighbourhoods, compared with 33% across England.

We can test whether differences in connectivity to jobs are associated with different Neet rates across similar areas. This is not causal analysis, as it does not control for other factors, such as income levels or job availability. In coastal left-behind neighbourhoods, the Neet rate falls from 27% in the least connected fifth of areas to 22% in second best-connected fifth. In other coastal areas it falls from 14% to 9% between the least and best connected (Figure 2). But elsewhere in England, Neet rates vary little with connectivity.

Figure 2. In coastal areas, the Neet rate falls as public transport access to jobs improves

To test this more robustly, once region, rural or urban location and deprivation (income, health, crime and living environment) are accounted for via statistical regression, areas with better public transport connectivity to jobs are associated with lower youth Neet rates. This link appears stronger in coastal areas. 

At its worst, England combines high costs and poor provision

At its worst, public transport in England combines high cost and poor provision. We compared available youth discounts with DfT data on public transport access to jobs data to see how many young Neets face both barriers.

We estimate that 25% of young Neets in England face both poor public transport access to jobs and no council-backed youth discount open to everyone their age (22% including bus companies’ tickets). In coastal areas, this goes up to a third (33% in coastal left-behind areas and 37% in other coastal areas). In 28 of England’s 97 coastal towns with at least 200 Neet young people, Neets face both barriers: around 14,700 young people in all. These include people in Lowestoft, Margate, Folkestone, Clacton-on-Sea, Paignton, Ramsgate, Dover, Torquay and Weymouth.

Buses can go further

Buses can go further. More bus services would reach the most left-behind rural and coastal areas and a bus discount can reach those who would benefit most. If this government introduced free bus travel for under-25s, alongside funding more bus services where provision remains limited, this would create £110 of value a year per bus user, and cost £1.1bn upfront, rising to £1.5bn a year over the long term. Full analysis of the costs of delivering such a scheme is set out in our 2026 paper Getting Moving on the Cost of Living