New age rule for free buss pass

Reporter: Alan Salter
Date online: 21 January 2010

Oldhamers who do not reach the age of 60 in the next 11 weeks will have to wait longer for their free bus pass.

For the Government has decided to gradually raise the eligibility age for the popular passes to 65 — starting on April 6 this year. Anyone whose 60th birthday falls after that date will have to keep paying up as the age rises gradually until April, 2020, when the qualifying age will be 65.

Since April, 2008, everyone in England who is over 60 or disabled has been entitled to a free annual bus pass giving free off-peak travel on local buses anywhere in the country. Greater Manchester residents are also entitled to free tram and train rides within Greater Manchester.

But in a little-publicised reform last month, the Government announced plans to re-establish the link between the age of eligibility the state pension age as part of a wider package of changes to increase the age at which pensioner benefits can be received in line with pension age changes.

It means that from April 6, the age of eligibility for concessionary travel for women will be pension age and for men it will be the pensionable age of a woman born on the same day.
The state pension age for women is rising by five years over a period of 10 years. The age of eligibility will rise in stages, between 2010 and 2020 and the earliest age for men and women to get bus passes will therefore rise gradually.

The Government decided that this would be the fairest method, rather than introduce a one-off rise which would leave those currently close to retirement age facing a full five-year delay.

Dean Nicholson, GMPTE’s customer services director said: “These changes may have implications insofar as there will be an overall reduction in the numbers of pass-holders (and thus concessionary journeys), compared with previous assumptions.”

The scheme has been hugely popular policy and passes have been taken up by around 11 million older and disabled people.

But in some areas, councils protested that they were being forced to cut services to other residents. And some bus operators admitted that fare-paying passengers were being left at stops because buses on the most popular routes were full of pensioners.

Last year, former Oldham Council leader David Jones failed in a bid to ease the recession for families by scrapping a 10p bus-fare rise for schoolchildren.

Labour members of Greater Manchester Integrated Transport Authority attempted to halt a 10p rise in concessionary fares to 80p — which authority leaders said was needed to balance the books — but were defeated by the Conservative and Lib-Dems coalition which runs the authority.

Over 60s travel free on all off-peak buses, trains, and trams in Greater Manchester and only pay the new 80p concessionary fares if they travel before 9.30am. No one who has already qualified for a pass will have to give it up.