Newcastle City Council is to bid for a £50m government grant that could make the city home to Britain’s first fully electric bus network.

Earlier this month, the Department for Transport invited local areas to apply, as “part of a £170m fund to encourage more people to take the bus, making journeys greener, easier and more reliable”.

The council told JesmondLocal it is too early to provide further details at this stage.

Outlining its criteria for choosing the first all-electric bus town, the government said that “the place must have a recognised air quality problem.” Last October, JesmondLocal reported that Jesmond had been taken out of the council’s air quality consultations, following negative responses to the idea of paying emissions charges.

Bids must be submitted to the government no later than April 30th. The application form asks local areas to “set out their high level vision for improving public transport in their area, and in particular the role of public transport in tackling emissions”. They must also show they have the support of local bus operating companies.

Nick Hartley, former Green Party parliamentary candidate for Newcastle East, welcomed some of the government’s proposals. “It seems like they are slowly responding to pressure from environmental campaigns,” he said.

Hartley added that “any measures to improve public transport and active travel in Jesmond should consider how we change the culture and help people see the benefits of leaving the car at home.”

Newcastle already has some electric buses on the way. The first were purchased by Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which reported last year that while the electric buses were the costliest option, the trust board approved them “given their overwhelming benefits with regards to sustainability and local population health”. The trust’s buses are expected to be seen on Newcastle’s roads later this year.

Jesmond resident and environmental campaigner Tony Waterston told JesmondLocal that electric buses are “the gold standard. All bus operators should have a plan to move to either hybrid or electric buses.”

The government’s funding ideas have not been welcomed by all, with Labour’s shadow transport secretary, Andy McDonald, telling The Guardian that the Tories have cut £635m a year from bus budgets in England. “The plans don’t begin to repair the damage these cuts have done,” he said.

The all-electric bus scheme comes as part of a wider government programme, promising a “better deal for bus users”. It is joined by a “rural mobility fund”, which is aimed at trialling on-demand bus services such as those seen in Liverpool, a “superbus fund”, aimed at delivering low fare, high frequency services and a “supported bus services fund”.

With bids due in April, the government expects to hear business cases of shortlisted areas in summer and autumn of this year.

The town that wins the £50m grant will be used as a model for the rest of the country, as the government aims to ensure only electric buses are in service by 2025.