England National Concessionary Travel Scheme
KENT COUNTY COUNCIL
PARISH BRIEFING
All Day August 2023
Background:
The
ENCTS (England National Concessionary Travel Scheme) enables people who have
reached pensionable age or who have specific disabilities, to use their free
bus pass to travel on all local buses throughout England between the hours of
9.30am and 11pm on Monday to Fridays and all day at weekends and on bank
holidays. During Covid many of these passholders stopped using buses and
off-peak bus patronage remains at 60-70% of pre-Covid usage rates.
All
Day August 2023
Kent
County Council (KCC) has worked with the county’s bus operators to deliver an
initiative which will allow all ENCTS passholders the ability to use their
passes all day throughout August. Instead of waiting until 9.30AM to use their passes, passholders will
be able to board buses from the time the first bus starts running in the
morning and their passes will be accepted for travel. The initiative is one of
a number of fares initiative being funded by Government and being delivered
through Kent’s Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP). Medway Council are running
a similar promotion in their area over the same period.
Passengers
who travel outside of Kent and Medway will need to wait until 9.30AM as usual
to use their bus passes and from the 1st September the times passes
can be used for bus travel will return to normal.
It
is hoped that this initiative will support the bus network in Kent by
encouraging people to use buses again after the pandemic.
Publicity
Communications
publicising All Day August are underway. Posters will be distributed to bus
operators, gateways and libraries and we will engage with , social media, local
newspapers, radio. parish, borough and district councils.
Information
about All Day August will be available at the website address www.kent.gov.uk/alldayaugust and the web address will be referenced
in all our PR.
The
DfT will support our communications by releasing supportive tweets from the
Minister, Richard Holden,
Please
visit www.kent.gov.uk/alldayaugust for further information about All Day
August, or contact jean.molloy@kent.gov.uk.
This information from Kent County Council will also be displayed on the village notice board outside Bapchild & Tonge Village Hall.
Parish Clerk, 26th July 2023
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