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The £8m bill to provide free bus travel for older and disabled people is preventing improvements to rural bus services, a senior councillor has said. Graham Plant, County Hall's cabinet member for highways, transport and infrastructure, said he will write to the government urging them to cover the costs of the concessionary bus pass scheme. Graham Plant, Norfolk County Council cabinet member for highways, transport and infrastructure (Image: Sonya Duncan) The Conservative-run council, which agreed £45m of cuts and savings and a council tax hike to balance the books in February , has long criticised the funding for the concessionary travel scheme.
It entitles people aged 66 and over who hold a pass to free bus travel after 9.30am until the last bus of the day on Mondays to Fridays and all day on Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays. Concessionary bus travel is costing Norfolk County Council about £8m a year (Image: Archant) Disabled people who hold the passes can get free bus travel at any time .
The council has to administer the scheme and gets some money from the government to reimburse bus firms, so they are neither better nor worse off. But Mr Plant said: "We have never had enough money to cover the concessionary scheme. "It started at about £4m which we had to find to bolster the scheme and it is now somewhere in the region of £8m.
"Norfolk should not be paying that cost. It was a government scheme and it remains a government scheme, but Norfolk County Council ratepayers are subsidising it." Mr Plant was speaking at a council meeting where Green county councillor Paul Neale questioned how much the scheme was costing the Conservative-controlled council.
Green county councillor Paul Neale (Image: Norwich City Council) Mr Plant said: "Over the years, if we had not had to pay that money for concessionary fares, imagine what the rural bus service might have looked like if we could have put the money in there. "I feel we are being fleeced. The fact that we could have spent that money on improving our normal bus services for every citizen, not just a few, is a real issue that needs to be addressed.
" Mr Plant said he had written to ministers under previous governments urging a funding rethink and that he would do so again. But he added: "I have no real hopes that there are going to do that". READ MORE: 200 spaces at Norwich park and ride off limits to drivers The Local Government Association has urged the Labour government to address the funding gap in its forthcoming spending review.
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