The Department established the Bus Centre of Excellence in 2023 to support the capability needs of the bus sector, providing free training courses and seminars to share skills and good practice for local government and bus sector staff.52 While we welcome this initiative, our constituents’ ongoing experience of poor bus services demonstrates the Department needs to better target this support to the outcomes it wants to achieve. The Department acknowledged that the Bus Centre of Excellence could do more to focus on the most-needed skills and said it would incorporate feedback from the bus sector in planning its forward work programme.53