Government spend on subsidised concessionary travel within Fife: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/18/02208  
Date received: 17 August 2018
Date responded: 29 August 2018

 

 

Information with regards to concessionary travel within Fife, how much the Government spends on subsidising it? Are those figures available?

 

 

Transport Scotland is responsible for the policy and operational delivery aspects of the Scotland-wide Free Bus Travel for Older and Disabled People scheme, which reimburses eligible Scottish bus operators for carrying concessionary passengers.

The scheme operates across the 32 Scottish local authority areas and is delivered on the National Entitlement Card (NEC). NECs are issued to eligible applicants by the local authority in which they reside, however as this is a national scheme cardholders can travel for free throughout Scotland. As such, free bus travel within the Fife area is not solely made by Fife cardholders.

Under the concessionary travel scheme, reimbursement is paid to individual bus operators and not paid to local authorities. The Scottish Government allocates funding to local authorities for the provision of services and whilst local authorities can use this funding for non-bus concessionary travel, there is no requirement for them to do so.  As such, we are unable to provide information on how much the Scottish Government spends on subsidising concessionary travel in Fife.

In terms of the number of people in Fife who are entitled to concessionary travel under the Scotland-wide Free Bus Travel Scheme for Older and Disabled People, I can confirm there are currently 101,894 cardholders.

I have attached a link to the Fife Council website which provides information about their local non-bus concessionary travel schemes. For further details about these schemes and how they operate you should contact Fife Council directly.  

https://www.fifedirect.org.uk/topics/index.cfm?fuseaction=service.display&p2sid=B412BA67-DCAD-004C-168BDC224387A0C6

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