Government body slams council claims over concessionary bus travel

In the council’s annual parking report it said concessionary bus travel for the elderly and disabled in the city was paid for by the profit from the city’s parking initiatives.

It said out of the near £11.5 million made from on street parking fines and tickets £10.2 million of that is spent on providing the city’s 46,000 bus passes.

But a spokesman for the Department of Transport (DfT) said the council does receive funding.

He said: “It is wrong to claim that councils do not receive funding for concessionary travel.

“Councils are required by law to provide free off-peak concessionary travel on local bus services to eligible older and disabled people and the government provides them with nearly £1 billion to do precisely this.

“Local authorities are able to provide concessionary travel to other groups at their own discretion.”

The council said this funding is not adequate and it has to resort to other means of funding.

A spokesman for the Brighton and Hove City Council said: “Central government had previously provided specific grant funding to support an element of the concessionary bus fare scheme, however, this funding is now included within the general revenue support grant (RSG) from the Department for Communities and Local Government.

“The funding historically provided was well below the cost of concessionary fares and the RSG has significantly reduced year on year since this funding was combined.

“The RSG is not allocated to a specific service or type of expenditure, it is therefore impossible to say how much general government grant is used to fund any specific spending area within the council’s budget.”

The money provided for concessionary bus travel is not ring fenced and the RSG can be distributed at the council’s discretion.

A spokesman for the Local Government Association said funding received by councils used to be significantly more and the DfT statement was “disingenuous”.