Transport Scotland - National Entitlement Card Programme Budget information: FOI release

Information requested

1. The annual budget allocated to the National Entitlement Card (NEC) Programme Office for each of the financial years 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25, and 2025/26.

2. A breakdown of this budget by category (e.g. card production, systems/IT infrastructure, staff costs, Improvement Service contract/grant).

3. The total number of NEC cards issued in each of those financial years, and the current total number of active cardholders.

4. Any internal or commissioned assessment of the cost per card issued, including production, personalisation, and distribution.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. The reasons why we don't have the information are explained below.

1. The below figures include the budget payments, payments due, payment recovery and the net grant issued relating to the National Concessionary Travel Schemes for each of the financial years. Grant payments were made in advance for a couple of years at the beginning of the scheme and no expenditure was validated until 2021/2022. Please note, Transport Scotland only have numbers from November 2021 onwards as this is when the current Card Management System (CMS) became operational. Therefore, there are no earlier figures available.

Year	19/20 to 22/23 Total	23/24	24/25	25/26	TOTAL
Budget	1,352,332.00	529,000.00	565,800.00	594,061.21	3,041,193.21
Payment Due	1,145,813.00	383,149.90	388,030.48	397,033.29	2,314,026.67
Payment Recovery	206,519.00	145,850.10	177,769.52	197,027.92	727,166.54
Net Grant Issued	1,145,813.00	383,149.90	388,030.48	397,033.29	2,314,026.67

The National Entitlement Card Programme Office (NECPO) may receive funding from other sources via the Improvement Service, but this information is subject to exemption under Section 17 of FOISA as Transport Scotland does not hold this information.

2. This information is subject to exemption under Section 17 of FOISA. Transport Scotland does not hold this information as we provide an overall grant funding award to the National Entitlement Card Programme Office and do not hold the budget breakdown. However, Transport Scotland does undertake a financial reconciliation of the grant on an annual basis to recover any unspent money, as outlined in the table above.

3. This information is subject to exemption under Section 17 of FOISA. Please note, Transport Scotland only have numbers from November 2021 onwards as this is when the current Card Management System (CMS) became operational. Therefore, there are no earlier figures available.

Year	21/22	22/23	23/24	24/25	25/26
Cards Issued	359,064	800,928 (Young Person’s) Scheme Launch Year)	616,653	623,604	618,570

The current number of active cards is 2,973,029.

4. This information is subject to exemption under Section 17 of FOISA. Transport Scotland does not hold this information as there has been no assessment of the cost per card issued and there is no variance in types of cards issued.

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