A67Delivery risk: AmberGate: pending
Transport access to jobs
Existing action A67, assessed at the same scope.
Not stated in the review record; treated as a provisional single-reviewer assessment, not an approved business case.
- Who and where
- Working-age residents without a car along one defined bus corridor in an English city region, where journey times or service hours limit access to employment centres. (from the action record) Jurisdiction: England.
- Result so far
- Range if completed: 14.0–20.0 out of 30 (equal weights; not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co))
- Funded now (baseline)
- Funded baseline: the Local Authority Bus Grant (£510.8m revenue in 2026–27 including a £30m uplift) and a £2 single-fare cap outside London for 2027 (£400m for England, announced 22 July 2026). Appraising one corridor for access to jobs, with a comparison, is a UK Facts proposal, not government policy. (from the action record)
- The change assessed (marginal)
- Appraise one defined corridor/service intervention where journey reliability, hours or cost constrain access to jobs. (from the 6 October review)
- Domain home: Growth & productivity
- In the national plan: Related option, assessed separately
What the evidence supports—and the next decision
More passenger journeys do not establish additional employment. The transport intervention must address a demonstrated access constraint.
AI-assisted analytical follow-up · 8 October 2026. Proposed appraisal design; the attributed scores below are unchanged. No funding or delivery agreement is implied.
- Define the change
- Appraise a named corridor and change in hours, reliability, frequency or fares against existing services.
- Test whether it works
- Door-to-door access to suitable jobs, reliability, sustained employment and displacement; assess accessibility as well as average journey time.
- Establish the cost
- Vehicles, operating hours, maintenance, subsidy and infrastructure net of fares; include ongoing operation after capital funding ends.
- Protect against harm
- Protect disabled and rural users and assess effects on other routes. Do not label old discontinued journey-time statistics as current.
Read with the outcome evidence and sources in the full assessment. Monitoring proposals are not existing baseline measurements. A numerical benefit or cost score needs evidence for the defined increment, not just the scale of the problem.
Full assessment of Transport access to jobs: ten criteria, scenarios, delivery, costs and monitoring
The ten criteria (0–3)
Each criterion is scored 0 to 3 by the reviewer. “Not yet assessed” means unknown: it is never counted as zero.
Scale and severity (Sc)2 of 3 — Serious harm to a defined group or widespread moderate harm
Increment beyond baseline (Ad)2 of 3 — Specific material change to existing delivery
Confidence in the proposed action (Ev)1 of 3 — Indirect, mixed, modelled or weak causal support
Expected incremental benefit (Bn)Not yet assessed
Residual harms (Hm)1 of 3 — Material harm/unresolved mitigation
Incremental affordability (Co)Not yet assessed
Delivery capacity (Ca)1 of 3 — Binding scarce resource
Distribution (Fa)3 of 3 — Benefits concentrated on disadvantaged people with assessed burdens
Meaningful first outcome (Ti)2 of 3 — More than one and up to three years
Readiness (Rd)2 of 3 — Named commissioning/allocation/coordination step
Four weightings
Normalised as 10 × weighted sum ÷ sum of weights, on a 0–30 scale. Where a criterion is not yet assessed, the range is the lowest and highest result if it were later scored 0 or 3 — not a score, a confidence interval or a rank.
- Equal weights: Range if completed: 14.0–20.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Evidence doubled: Range if completed: 13.6–19.1 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Scale doubled: Range if completed: 14.5–20.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Cost ignored (the funding gate still applies): Range if completed: 15.6–18.9 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
Funding gate: Not passed — the cost is not yet assessed or no allocation is committed for this scope. Ignoring cost in a weighting never removes the gate.
Delivery risk and gate
Delivery risk shown: AmberReview’s claim: Amber. Best the recorded evidence allows: Amber.
Review’s reason: Name route/mode, baseline users, service hours and comparator; cost operation, capital, subsidy and maintenance. Assess accessibility and displacement, not gross local job counts. Proposed owners: transport authorities/operators and relevant national bodies.
Why it is not Green yet
- Scope (population, place and increment) not verified against the delivery baseline.
- No verified owner with the powers in place.
- Delivery capacity not verified.
- Lifetime incremental costs not complete.
- No credible funding (a committed allocation for the scope).
- Safeguards not specified.
- Monitoring lacks a metric, a data source or a baseline.
Green needs verified scope, a verified owner with the powers, verified capacity, complete lifetime costs with credible funding, specified safeguards and monitoring with a metric, source and baseline. Amber means appraisal gaps remain; Red means a material delivery obstacle. Red does not mean unimportant.
Gate: Pending — appraisal incomplete (review label: “Pending baseline verification, incremental costing and funding; not a rollout approval”).
Why: Scores incomplete; Funding gate not passed (cost unknown or no credible funding).
The gate is separate from national list membership: being listed does not make an option eligible, and an eligible option need not be listed.
Cost and funding
Lifetime costing: Not established. Review: “Not fully costed in this review”.
Still to cost: Name route/mode, baseline users, service hours and comparator; cost operation, capital, subsidy and maintenance. Assess accessibility and displacement, not gross local job counts. Proposed owners: transport authorities/operators and relevant national bodies.
Funding status: not identified.
Owner, powers and capacity
Proposed owner: transport authorities/operators and relevant national bodies (proposed, unverified).
Powers: needs a decision or allocation. Capacity: binding constraint.
Powers and capacity read from the review’s Rd and Ca anchors; no proposed owner has agreed to act (the review: “Proposed owners have not agreed to act”).
- England:
- Local transport authorities and mayoral combined authorities (franchising or enhanced partnerships under the Bus Services Act 2025), with the Department for Transport (action record)
- Scotland:
- not assessed
- Wales:
- not assessed
- Northern Ireland:
- not assessed
Buses are devolved in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; London runs its own franchised network. Not assessed outside England.
Dependencies, safeguards and risks
Depends on: None recorded.
Safeguards
None specified yet.
Monitoring and measured results
Metric: Define and baseline the outcome described in delivery requirements before approval.
Data source: Not yet named. Baseline: Not yet established.
Measures already on the domain page
- Local bus passenger journeys: latest 3.7 billion (90% of 2019–20) (Year ending March 2025); baseline not published (England).
A page measure is not necessarily the review’s metric; linking the two is an editorial decision still to be made.
Evidence for the outcome
Outcome: Define and baseline the outcome described in delivery requirements before approval.
Transport evidence shows mixed employment effects and possible displacement. No selected corridor or mode has a costed case here.
Sources: whatworksgrowth.org (P-GC-WWG-TRANSPORT-2015)
SWOT points it addresses
Review record
Assessment status: Not stated in the review record; treated as a provisional single-reviewer assessment, not an approved business case.
Reviewer: Original assessment author (name not supplied). Reviewed: 6 October 2026.
Scored in the working review of 6 October 2026 on the shared ten-criterion scale (one reviewer); not independently calibrated.
An editorial screening framework by one reviewer, not a formal appraisal or business case. Proposed owners have not agreed to act.