Elderly and disabled people may still be able to travel for free in the early morning on local Grimsby, Immingham, and Cleethorpes buses beyond the end of March – but only if the council has the money to be able to offer it.
Councils are legally obliged to facilitate free bus travel between 9:30am and 11pm on weekdays and all day Saturday and Sunday. But in June last year, NELC started offering free travel before 9.30am Monday to Fridays to passholders as well, until at least March 31, 2025. Now, a report recommends keeping it for another year, to March 2026 ‘if sufficient funds are available’. This would be through a fixed one year reimbursement agreement with Stagecoach East Midlands.
Last year, the council moved to go beyond its statutory bus concessions duty as a result of having a spare £60,000 government Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) cash it could use. In 2024/25, the council got £3,830,530 BSIP funding, a mixture for everyday and long-term investments in local bus travel.
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The 2025/26 allocation is slightly lower, at £3,733,027, a mix again of revenue and capital, with some capacity funding. A North East Lincolnshire Council spokesperson said: “Councils have a statutory duty to provide free bus travel for eligible pass holders. The current scheme is currently in a draft stage and is set to go before cabinet later this year.
“If approved, it will cover the scheme from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. However, we will continue to monitor and review the scheme to ensure bus travel is accessible for everyone.”
The council report details that 5.6 per cent of spend on concessionary fares in 2024/25 has gone on the non-legally required pre-9:30am weekday free travel. There has also been an increase in concessionary bus passenger users.
August 2024 saw over 150,000 such passenger numbers, compared to a little above 120,000 for the same month in 2022. Another element of council encouragement of more bus users has been a £1 fare cap for local travel at weekends and evenings for all users.
This has been active since November 2023. This is not mentioned in the concessionary report, which concentrates on bus pass users.
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