Simon Bottery: The bus is a social lifeline that’s under threat

The Government’s spending review last year hit bus travel hard. It reduced its grant to bus operators, changed the way councils are reimbursed for providing free bus travel and imposed swingeing cuts on the overall grant to councils, some of which was often used to subsidise local bus services.

No wonder that a committee of MPs has just reported that seven in every 10 councils are reducing their funding for bus services.

Rural, evening and Sunday services are particularly affected. The much-loved concessionary pass, offering free bus travel to disabled people and those over 60, is becoming less and less useful as operators withdraw more and more of the services it can be used on.

Yet buses are critical to many people’s lives. Twice as many people use buses each day as use trains, and they are particularly important to those on low incomes, people in rural areas and older people. The tragedy is that more older people were just starting to get used to using buses as a regular, reliable and – crucially – economic way of getting around. The introduction of the free bus pass for older people and the disabled in 2006 led to a big rise in travel.

In 2006, just over one in four older people were using local buses at least once a week but by 2009 that had risen to nearly four in 10.

No wonder that a Yorkshireman told the Parliamentary committee: “The Dales and District service number 70 that runs between Ripon and Northallerton enables my wife and I to get to the shops, attend doctors’ appointments, visit our banks and building societies, and the post office amongst other facilities.”

One of the people we support in North Yorkshire told me: “The bus pass is wonderful. You can travel everywhere – that was one of the best things to happen to pensioners.”

For many older people, particularly poorer pensioners, public transport can be a necessity – they simply can’t afford the costs of running a car.

At Independent Age, we give out tens of thousands of pounds every year to help older people on low incomes keep their cars on the road and pay for the increasing costs of insurance and petrol.

But even for those who can afford – with or without financial help – to keep a car on the road, there is often a point in their lives when ill-health or declining capabilities mean they need to hang up the car keys for good. For many older people that can mark a difficult point in life, representing a loss of independence and an admission of age and disability.

Bus services are vital to help these older people stay active and part of their local community. They are essential for daily tasks like food shopping (particularly in rural areas, where one in four people have no local supermarket).

They are necessary for trips to hospitals and GP surgeries.

But transport is not just a practical need. It is just as important to ensure that people stay socially connected and to ward off the threat of social isolation and loneliness that blight a significant minority of older people’s lives.

One in five of the older people supported by Independent Age says that a lack of transport affects the contact they are able to have with family and friends. But it’s not just older people themselves, who reap the benefits of their bus travel; it has a wider impact on society too. It allows them freedom to continue contributing to their communities through, for example, volunteering, and providing endless unpaid hours in childcare. Last year alone, the hidden value of older people’s volunteering efforts reached £10bn.

So what can be done to preserve a transport lifeline for older people? Firstly, we think it’s time for some joined-up thinking about buses by councils and national government.

In 2009-2010, the Government provided a total of £1.6bn in subsidies for bus travel, of which half was to pay for free bus passes. If the total subsidy is going to fall, which sadly seems inevitable, we need to look at how best to spend it. Preserving vital bus services may need to take more of a priority than keeping travel entirely free for all older people. We support the committee’s view that more research into usage of free bus passes is urgently needed so that better decisions can be made.

Secondly, we need to look at other, imaginative, transport options for older people. In the USA, many states have a scheme whereby older people can access a low-cost taxi service from volunteer drivers. The volunteers are rewarded by building up “credits” which they in turn can use to pay for rides if they themselves stop driving.

The scheme is subsidised by local shops and businesses, which see benefits in older people being able to still access them when they can no longer drive. We think schemes like this need investigation and piloting in England.

Simon Bottery is director of policy at Independent Age.