nexus.org.uk journey planner

advertisement

• Search Search

Public Transport: Planning a Journey

Planning a journey by public transport has never been easier. In addition to more old school bus and rail timetables, online journey planning tools and apps allow you to easily identify where to travel from and to, at what time, and on what service.

Online Journey Planners

Online tools are a really easy option for planning your bus or train journey. Generally, they offer live updates on services making them really useful when service options are changing. All you need to do is enter where you want to travel from and to and your preferred travel time. The journey planner will do the rest.

Nexus have a great online journey planning tool for journeys made across Tyne and Wear. Plan your route from A to B, view live departure information and compare the options available whether you’re looking to travel by bus, train, Metro or a combination of all three.

It’s a good idea to look at timetables if you aren’t sure exactly when you’ll be travelling but would like to know the frequency of services.

The best way to view a timetable for services in Newcastle and around Tyne and Wear is on the Nexus website , or alternatively on the operator’s website, with the main operators being Arriva and Go North East .

Below you’ll find information and links to the timetables of key services at Newcastle Great Park.

Q3 – Go North East This service links NGP with Wallsend, with stops in Gosforth and Newcastle city centre.

46 – Arriva This service runs from Featherstone Grove, at NGP, to Newcastle bus station via Gosforth.

To the south of the site (for residents at Greenside) you can also make use of services operating along Kingston Park Road , here’s the main service:

X47 – Stagecoach This service runs from Kingston Park to Newcastle, via Kenton Bar.

Bus operator apps are fast becoming the go to place for planning (and paying for) bus journeys. Not only do they let you plan a journey between A and B, but they also show you the location of your bus in real-time on a user friendly map. Gone are the days of waiting around at the bus stop waiting for your bus.

Make sure you’re making the most of the apps available now by checking out our handy guide , or visit the Arriva, Stagecoach and Go North East websites to download the app today.

Apps also provide a great way to plan a journey by train. In a similar way to bus apps, they allow you to easily plan a journey between any two stations, whilst also providing direct access to live updates, station information, booking facilities and much more. We’ve provided links to our favourite rail apps below.

You can also get live updates on services with the Metro App. As well as pulling live travel alert data direct from Tyne and Wear Metro Control room the app incorporates official timetable and connection information.

Related articles

The Benefits Of Sharing Your Journey To Work

Power Up Your Cycling: Electric Bike Buying Guide

Commuter Bike Buying Guide

Public Transport: Local Choices

Privacy overview.

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Analytical cookies help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on its usage.

• Skip to main content
• Skip to footer

Traveline North East

Plan a Journey

Forgot your password? Register

Have a First Bus App account?

We're sorry but you’ll need to register separately for a web account at the moment.

• Your Shopping Cart
• Journey Planner
• Buy a Ticket
• First Bus App
• Contactless
• Ticket Gifting
• Commuter Travel Club
• Commuter Travel Club Employer Information
• Commuter Travel Club Employer FAQs
• Commuter Travel Club Employee Information
• Commuter Travel Club Employee FAQs
• Help and Support
• Lost Property
• Help with First Bus apps
• How to Catch the Bus
• Extra Help to Travel
• Bus Accessibility
• Customer Complaints Charter
• Our Companies
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
• Policies and Accreditations

Journey planner

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

The tortuous journey of the UK government’s Rwanda plan

Key dates in the Conservatives’ struggle to push through their policy of processing asylum seekers in a third country

• Sunak’s Rwanda deportations bill will become law after peers back down

14 April The then prime minister, Boris Johnson, announces plans to deport those arriving in the UK on small boats to Rwanda for their claims to be processed. The scheme will “prove a very considerable deterrent”, he insists, and Rwanda is “one of the safest countries in the world” with “ the capacity to resettle tens of thousands of people in the years ahead” . Costs will include an initial payment of £120m.

14 June The first flight taking asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda is cancelled minutes before takeoff after the European court of human rights in Strasbourg issues last-minute injunctions to stop it. Seven individuals are believed to be onboard.

4 October The then home secretary, Suella Braverman, tells an event at the Tory party conference: “I would love to have a front page of the Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda , that’s my dream, it’s my obsession.”

7 March Braverman introduces the illegal migration bill, saying she is confident it is compatible with international obligations. The bill, which becomes law in July 2023, provides that the home secretary has a duty to detain and remove those arriving in the UK illegally, either to Rwanda or another “safe” third country, while those detained will not be granted bail or able to seek judicial review for the first 28 days of detention.

15 November The supreme court rules the Rwanda policy is unlawful. Five judges unanimously uphold a court of appeal ruling that there has not been a proper assessment of whether Rwanda is safe. They find there are substantial grounds to believe deported refugees are at risk of having their claims in Rwanda wrongly assessed, or of being returned to their country of origin to face persecution. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, says the government will work on a new treaty with Rwanda and that he is prepared to change UK law.

5 December Britain and Rwanda sign a new treaty on asylum in an attempt to address the supreme court’s concerns. James Cleverly travels to Kigali to sign it, becoming the third home secretary to travel to Rwanda, following in the footsteps of Braverman and Priti Patel. The British government says the new treaty ensures that people relocated to Rwanda are not at risk of being returned to a country where their lives or freedom would be threatened.

6 December A day later, the UK government introduces the safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill to override the supreme court’s ruling. The bill, which declares Rwanda safe, also aims to block Strasbourg from halting the removal of asylum seekers to east Africa .

1 March The National Audit Office, the official spending watchdog, says plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda will cost taxpayers £1.8m for each of the first 300 people the government deports. The overall cost of the scheme stands at more than half a billion pounds, according to the figures released to the NAO. Even if the UK sends nobody to the African state, Sunak has signed up to pay £370m from the public purse over the five-year deal.

22 April The safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill is finally passed after weeks of parliamentary back-and-forth as peers repeatedly blocked the legislation with a series of amendments. But peers eventually back down, meaning the controversial bill will become law.

• Immigration and asylum
• Conservatives
• Rishi Sunak

More on this story

‘England is hope’: some say they will try again – despite Channel deaths

Humanitarian groups demand safe routes to UK after five deaths in Channel

Stumbling blocks that could still impede Rwanda deportations

Sunak ‘confident’ civil service will enact Rwanda bill despite legal concerns

Minister urges MPs and peers to back Rwanda bill as likely final day of debate begins

Struggling to control his anger, Tetchy Rishi went full on aggressive-aggressive

First deportation flight to Rwanda will not leave till summer, admits Sunak

Rwanda bill clears parliament after peers abandon final battle over safety amendment – as it happened

No matter how bad the Rwanda bill is, a bunch of unelected peers shouldn’t decide its fate

Most viewed.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

U.K. Parliament approves a plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda

Fatima Al-Kassab

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks during a press conference in London on Monday regarding a treaty between Britain and Rwanda to transfer asylum-seekers to the African country. Toby Melville/Pool/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks during a press conference in London on Monday regarding a treaty between Britain and Rwanda to transfer asylum-seekers to the African country.

LONDON — The British government's bill to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda has won approval in Parliament, after two years of wrangling over the plan, which has drawn criticism from international human rights groups.

The unelected House of Lords cleared the way for the bill to become law after dropping the last of its suggested amendments early Tuesday, just after midnight local time.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has insisted the legislation will deter people from making the perilous journey across the English Channel, a central part of his " stop the boats " campaign for reelection.

Critics and lawmakers say there's no evidence the plan would work as a deterrent, while United Nations and European officials say it could breach Britain's obligations under international human rights law.

A deadly journey to Britain

Just hours after the legislation passed, French coast guard officials said that at least five people, including a young child, had died attempting to cross the English Channel from France to England. French news reports said the victims were on an inflatable boat that was overloaded with 110 people.

"These tragedies have to stop. I will not accept a status quo which costs so many lives," British Home Secretary James Cleverly wrote on X, formerly Twitter. He said the government is trying to end the human-smuggling trade that puts people's lives at risk.

Prime Minister Sunak said in a statement Tuesday morning, the new legislation is "a fundamental change in the global equation on migration," and insisted that nothing would stand in the way of getting flights to Rwanda off the ground.

King Charles III is expected to give his royal assent officially making the bill into law in the next few days.

U.K. Supreme Court to weigh legality of plan to deport migrants to Rwanda

The plan is to send some of the people the government says arrive illegally in the U.K. to Rwanda, where local authorities would process their asylum claims.

The U.K. signed a deal with Rwanda in April 2022, in which Rwanda agreed to process and settle asylum-seekers who initially arrive in Britain.

Sending asylum-seekers from Britain to Rwanda is human trafficking, an advocate says

Tens of thousands of migrants attempt to reach the United Kingdom by boat each year. The U.K. government recorded more than 4,600 migrants crossing the Channel from January to March, surpassing a previous total for that period.

In this Rwandan village, survivors and perpetrators of the genocide live side by side

Sunak, who is trailing in the polls ahead of an election expected this fall, is staking his Conservative Party's reelection campaign on this plan, despite several legal challenges from top British and European courts. In one of his latest moves, last year, Sunak introduced " emergency " legislation to write into British law that Rwanda is a safe country, in an attempt to salvage the plan after it was struck down by the U.K. Supreme Court.

The U.K. Supreme Court has struck down a plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda

No flights deporting migrants have left from London for Rwanda in the two years since the plan was first announced by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In June 2022, a plane was grounded by an eleventh-hour ruling from the European Court of Human Rights, which intervened to stop the deportation of one of the asylum-seekers on the flight.

This provided grounds for the remaining six people on the flight to put forward legal challenges in London courts. Last year, NPR spoke with an asylum-seeker from Iran, who was on that grounded plane.

"They treated us like criminals and murderers. Every knock on the door, I think it's the authorities coming to escort us back to that plane," the man, now living temporarily in a hotel, told NPR.

The plan has drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups and lawmakers from different parties, including some in Sunak's own party, who say it is incompatible with the U.K.'s responsibilities under international human rights law.

"The new legislation marks a further step away from the U.K.'s long tradition of providing refuge to those in need, in breach of the Refugee Convention," United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement Tuesday.

Michael O'Flaherty, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, said it "raises major issues about the human rights of asylum-seekers and the rule of law more generally."

Many in the U.K. believe there's no coincidence that Sunak pushed this through Parliament within months of an expected election.

"A lot of this is performative cruelty," says Daniel Merriman, a lawyer who has represented some of the asylum-seekers who were slated to be deported to Rwanda in the past. "The elephant in the room in the upcoming election."

Opinion polls show the British public is largely divided over the idea of deporting asylum-seekers to Rwanda.

"On the principle, people are split down the middle really," says Sunder Katwala, director of British Future , a nonpartisan think tank that researches public attitudes. "On the question of whether it's going to happen, whether it's going to work and whether it'll be value for money, there's a majority that are very skeptical of this already."

The British government has already paid Rwanda nearly $300 million to take asylum-seekers Britain doesn't want.

While Sunak's Conservatives largely support the transfer to Rwanda, some hard-liners in his party say the latest version of the legislation, which has been rewritten several times, isn't tough enough. Suella Braverman, a former home secretary who spearheaded the Rwanda plan when she was in office, said the latest version was "fatally flawed," with "too many loopholes" that would fail to stop the crossings.

While Sunak may have overcome one hurdle this week, experts say he can expect others.

"His real headaches might be ahead. Now he's got to show whether it works or not," Katwala says.

One challenge may be getting an airline to agree to participate . On Monday, experts from the U.N. human rights office warned aviation authorities against facilitating what it called "unlawful removals" of asylum-seekers to Rwanda, saying they risk violating international human rights laws.

And court challenges could delay the legislation from being implemented, Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, told The Associated Press .

"I don't think it is necessarily home and dry," he said. "We will see some attempts to block deportations legally."

• Rishi Sunak
• asylum-seekers
• United Kingdom
• Illegal immigration
• Immigration

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

What Is the Rwanda Policy? U.K.’s Plan for Asylum Seekers Explained

The plan has been in the works for years, but the passage of a contentious bill by Britain’s Parliament puts the country closer to sending asylum seekers to the African nation.

By Megan Specia

Reporting from London

After a prolonged battle in the courts and in Parliament, Britain’s Conservative government secured passage of legislation on Monday that is intended to allow the country to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

The legislation is intended to override a Supreme Court ruling last year that deemed the plan to send asylum seekers to the African nation unlawful . The judges ruled that Rwanda was not a safe country in which refugees could resettle or have their asylum cases heard.

The Rwanda plan, which has become a flagship policy of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at a time when his party’s approval ratings have floundered, now seems closer than ever to becoming a reality. But critics say it raises profound questions about the rule of law and the separation of powers in Britain and could affect thousands of asylum seekers. Rights groups have vowed to fight the plan in the courts.

Here’s what to know.

What is the Rwanda policy?

As the number of asylum seekers arriving across the English Channel rose after a lull during the coronavirus pandemic, the Conservative government pledged to “stop the boats.” Most of those arriving by small, often unseaworthy boats apply for international protection in Britain through the asylum system, and many are later found to be refugees and permitted to settle in Britain.

Through a series of bills and agreements, the government introduced a policy that said that people arriving by small boat or any another “irregular means” would never be admissible for asylum in Britain. Instead, they would be detained and sent to Rwanda, where their asylum cases would be heard, and, if successful, allow them to be resettled there.

The government has argued that the Rwanda policy will be a deterrent, stemming the flow of tens of thousands of people who make dangerous crossings from France to Britain each year. This has been questioned by some migration experts who say that the people on small boats already risk their lives to travel to Britain.

Rights groups and legal experts have warned against the policy, saying it contravenes Britain’s legal obligations to refugees under international law and violates the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention .

How did we get here?

In early 2021 , Boris Johnson, then prime minister, began discussing plans to send asylum seekers abroad. Taking control of Britain’s borders was a central promise of the 2016 Brexit campaign, championed by Mr. Johnson and Mr. Sunak.

In the summer of 2021, Priti Patel, then the minister responsible for overseeing immigration and asylum, introduced the Nationality and Borders Bill , making it a criminal offense to enter the country by irregular means, for instance by boat and without a visa. The bill also gave the authorities more scope to make arrests and remove asylum seekers .

By April 2022, Britain announced a deal with Rwanda to send asylum seekers there in exchange for hundreds of millions in development funding, and the Nationality and Borders Bill became law later that month.

But amid legal challenges and a last-minute interim decision by the European Court of Human Rights, the first planned flight in 2022 was halted . By early 2023, Suella Braverman, the home secretary then, revived the plan with the Illegal Migration Bill.

That legislation, which became law last July, gave her office a duty to remove nearly all asylum seekers who arrived in Britain “illegally” — meaning without a visa or through other means, like covert arrivals by small boat or truck. (In practice, many of these asylum seekers would not be arriving illegally since genuine refugees have a right to enter and claim international protection.)

The asylum seekers would then be sent to their home countries, “or another safe third country, such as Rwanda.” No matter the outcome of their claims, they would have no right to re-entry, settlement or citizenship in Britain.

These efforts were all challenged in the courts, ending with the Supreme Court ruling that deemed the plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda unlawful.

The Safety of Rwanda Bill and a treaty with the African nation earlier this year are intended to override the court’s judgment by declaring Rwanda safe in law, and instructing judges and immigration officials to treat it as such.

How much has Britain spent on the plan?

Although no asylum seekers have yet been sent to Rwanda, Britain’s independent public spending watchdog last month found that the government will have paid Rwanda £370 million , or around $457 million, by the end of 2024. And costs to carry out the policy will rise even further if flights do take off.

For each person eventually sent, Britain has pledged to pay Rwanda an additional £20,000 in development fees, plus £150,874 per person for operational costs. After the first 300 people are sent, Britain will send an additional £120 million to Rwanda.

Yvette Cooper, the opposition Labour minister responsible for a portfolio that includes migration, on Tuesday called the cost “extortionate” and argued that the money should be put into “boosting our border security instead.”

What has been the reaction to the plan?

The policy has faced intense opposition almost since its inception, with the United Nations’ refugee agency, UNHCR, warning in 2021 that it violated international law.

On Tuesday, Filippo Grandi, the UNHCR commissioner, said the law sought to “shift responsibility for refugee protection, undermining international cooperation and setting a worrying global precedent.”

Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for Human Rights, said the bill “raises major issues about the human rights of asylum seekers and the rule of law more generally” and urged Britain to “refrain from removing people under the policy and reverse the bill’s “effective infringement of judicial independence.”

When could the first deportation flights take off?

Mr. Sunak initially promised to deport asylum seekers by the spring, but on Monday he said the first flights would not depart until June or July.

He said the government had put an airfield on standby, booked commercial charter planes and identified 500 trained escorts who would accompany asylum seekers to Rwanda.

However, legal experts say the plan is deeply flawed, and rights groups have vowed to fight any plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Richard Atkinson, the vice president of the Law Society of England and Wales, a professional association for lawyers, said in a statement on Tuesday that the bill “remains a defective, constitutionally improper piece of legislation.”

On Tuesday, more than 250 British rights organizations wrote to Mr. Sunak vowing to oppose the measures in European and British courts.

Individuals who receive notices that they will be sent to Rwanda are expected to start legal challenges against their removal in British courts, and some may also appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, which could again issue an injunction to halt flights.

Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from Geneva.

Megan Specia reports on Britain, Ireland and the Ukraine war for The Times. She is based in London. More about Megan Specia