A BUS fare in the centre of Brighton and Hove is to rise.

Brighton and Hove Buses is increasing its £2 fare covering the short-hop central area to £2.20 from April 25.

It is the first rise in five years. People can avoid this change by buying a centrefare m-ticket on its app for £2.

However about 70 per cent of fares are being frozen, including cash fares such as young person's saver tickets and special single fares, short hops, the main £2.50 city wide single and the one day city saver and network saver.

Prices are changing on some out of city fares, network savers and longer term city savers.

All mobile and key card tickets of between one day and a weekly city savers atickets are frozen, as are pay monthly tickets on the key card and Duo, Quattro and Family m-tickets.

The company says increasing congestion in the city has largely contributed to the bus operator reviewing its annual fares to encourage a change in behaviour in its customers towards buying tickets in advance to prevent delays to journeys.

The 1.5 per cent increase in revenue from the change will help the bus operator to maintain service levels of buses severely affected by congestion-related delays.

Brighton and Hove Buses managing director Martin Harris said: “Despite excellent support from the council with bus priority lanes over the years, congestion is our single biggest challenge to running a reliable, frequent, efficient service.

“Every year it gets worse and we simply can’t ignore it. We’re always looking at ways to decrease journey times for our passengers.

“Most customers already buy their tickets before they travel – which are intentionally cheaper than buying on the bus – but if we can encourage more to do so then that means less time boarding, delays to other passengers and the service. This is a really important way to help counteract the delays caused by congestion.

“We know people are having a tough time right now and that’s why we’ve done our best to make the annual review as reasonable as possible.

“Rising congestion year on year means we have to increase the number of buses on a route, or reduce their frequency, or both. We don’t have a choice.

“We serve the biggest population of bus users per head of population outside of London and we want to continue to provide a reliable, frequent and efficient service.”