Buses / Concessionary travel / how does funding work?

[whole diary]

[Mark A]

Can anyone point me to an informative read on how this is handled from the point of view... of funding, from the perspective of the bus companies, and what monitoring is carried out of the use made by concessionary pass holders of the bus network? (The last seems very problematic, as for the most part the system might record where a concessionary holder has joined a bus service but has no knowledge of where they alight).

The only thing I've ever read on this is an article describing that the funding providers for services from, I think it was Preston bus station, were for some reason feeling a certain amount of financial pain as they were seeing large concessionary traffic flows to e.g. Southport - but, was it... nothing to show for it in the local economy.

Thanks

Mark

[eightonedee]

A quick "google" revealed this - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/concessionary-bus-travel-applications-proforma. Note that it seems there's a few links to follow from the page you land on to get a fuller picture.

An acquaintance of mine used to work for one of the First bus companies and mentioned to me that the process of gathering information on use, organising it and claiming the income was far from straightforward, and implied it became an annual horse trade with the local authorities involved.

[Mark A]

Thanks, a google search didn't throw that up for me as your search term was probably more clued.

(Reads source: tl:dr 'It's complicated'.)

Mark

[stuving]

My post from 2014 is still, I think, correct about the theory, including that central government pays ENCTS^▸ (English National Concessionary Travel Scheme) payments to bus operators in full. And the two links in it still point to up-to-date DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) pages.

The one thing I remember since then (pre-Covid) is that the ENCTS payment was lumped in together with other bus grants so that, when the total was reduced, the percentage cut would look smaller. That led a lot of LTAs^▸ (Local Transport Authority) to squeeze the ENCTS payment rates - which they have scope to do, by choosing how to do the sums - to keep other bus subsidies as high as they could.

I've not followed whether the Covid emergency funding, and since, have changed that - anyone?