How much money to date has been spent on promoting the Young Persons' Free Bus Travel Scheme: FOI release

Information requested

“How much money has been spent by the Scottish Government to date promoting the Young Persons’ (Under 22s) Free Bus Travel Scheme?”

Response

In the run up to the launch of the Young Persons’ Free Bus Travel Scheme the overall public advice was to stay at home and avoid large groups as a result of COVID-19 cases rising due to the Omicron variant. This meant we focussed our messaging on young people with an essential need to travel.

Since the scheme launch, we have also been working closely with our delivery partners to make further improvements to the application processes, managed by the Improvement Service and individual local authorities, to ensure that all children and young people can receive their cards as simply as possible whilst maintaining the integrity of the child safety measures in place.

As a result, we have not yet implemented our planned national marketing campaign. In the meantime, we have undertaken extensive strategic communications activities including; paid for advertising during COP26, and March-May this year; launching the new, dedicated website freebus.scot; and providing promotional and communications materials to over 300 public, private and third sector organisations across Scotland.

As at close of business on Friday 26 August, the Scottish Government has spent £774,017.27 on promoting the Young Persons’ Free Bus Travel Scheme. A significant proportion of these costs are associated with the creation of substantial advertising materials in preparation for the national marketing campaign.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.