Are concessionary pass holders 'entitled freeloaders'?

[markymark2000]

I've used my age-related pass extensively in the time I've had it and never shown it to a driver as it lives inside a wallet with my railcard. How does that make me a freeloader as opposed to a potential undetected fraudster?

Anyone could be a fraudster using someone elses pass. I don't believe fraudsters have a common look (happy to be advised otherwise). I do believe there is fraud going on though, as you say, your card stays in your wallet so no one knows if that pass belongs to you or you've stolen it. Why is it that young people have to have photo ID to prove that they are under 16 and pay the appropriate fare but conc passes aren't ID checked to ensure that stolen passes are removed and fraudsters reprimanded.

I personally think that it is a good thing for a number of reasons , but there are always people who object to paying for anything the don’t directly benefit from. (“Why should I pay for schools. My kids are grown up.”) However, there are always those who abuse or complain about any restrictions on their benefits and if they are older it tends to be more obvious.

For me, it's not nesecarilly a case of 'why should I pay for it', I get why the scheme is there and it has it's good points but without a stupid amount of additional funding or restricting usage, there is no way for the reimbursement to increase. Low reimbursement is one of the key reasons why so many buses are being cut. Many routes, because of the concessionary passes, were struggling pre Covid and they are in an even worse state now. Restricting usage and combatting fraudulent usage would mean the money in the pot would go further and go a long way towards improving local bus networks. Especially in areas which are pass heavy.

I wasn't particularly referring to that issue tbh. I was more addressing the people who want Pension Credit to come into it or to implement reduced fares rather than free travel. A gallery near me that was previously free of charge to enter started charging £1 a few years ago and now demands £5!

Even as someone who thinks that fares should be charged, I think that there should be a low limit possibly set in law with it to be reviewed every 10 years or so to ensure that it's still a fair price but not too punishing to users.

(1)
Up to the pandemic, the National Fraud Initiative identified that the use of deceased or no-longer-valid passes totals to around £1.9 million - £2.2 million annually, set against a general overall spend of £1.1 billion - £1.2 billion on concessionary travel schemes nationally (£780,000 - £880,000 excluding London), depending on what year you look at. So around 0.15%-0.2% of overall spend on concessionary travel is detectable fraud.

9.4 million older and disabled concessionary travel passes were in use England in 2017/18 – with 90% of those concessionary passes given to older people and 10% to disabled people. Of those eligible to have a concessionary pass through age, only 78% have one: while some of this is deliberate non-uptake, for some the bus isn't actually a useful option, and some LAs offer a free Senior Railcard in lieu of a bus pass.

Recouping (for example) £300 per pass would cost between 3-9% (depending on what you include in cost of sale, but card fees alone will be 3%+ and cash handling costs aren't any lower), so between £1 and £3 per pass. This would need to be undertaken every 5 years (along with pass expiry) so assume 20% are applied for or renewed each year. Thus, if we were to shift some funding of ENCTS to this passholder-paying situation, the overall cost of sale would be between £16 million and £42 million a year, vastly outnumbering the cost of fraud (which is only estimated, and of course would still take place - we haven't fixed this), and you would almost certainly have to procure some administration to manage means testing, which would also still be required for disabled concessionary travel. Some people would, indeed, be dissuaded, but the overall cost of funding probably wouldn't decrease, due to the unwanted detrimental effect on bus networks. Also, the decreased societal benefit would likely hit NHS costs, social care costs, and spread burden across other civil and voluntary services.

All these numbers are a bit hand-wavy, but the key take-away is that the cost of pass-payment would be around an order of magnitude greater than the currently apparent loss.

Does the investigation include wider using someone elses card or is it specifically limited to using a deceased persons card?
The way to combat the fraud is to get drivers to check the photos on the passes. In the exact same way that they are told to do so for young persons tickets. Many bus operators now refuse to sell child fares to people 16-18 without a photo ID card issued by the bus operator or local authority showing that the person is a young person. If kids have to have their cards checked, ENCTS should be the same. Or start asking random questions which the ticket machine can verify (in the same way it currently verifies hotlisted cards) like 'day of birth' or 'month of birth'. Yes fraud can still happen but it would reduce it as people would mess up the answers. It's difficult to remember someone elses date of birth. You don't need huge investigations to happen. Prevent the use on the bus.

 

[Runningaround]

See, here you get the same judgemental accusations towards people using bus passes as benefit claimants get from those who watch Jeremy Kyle and read the Daily Mail.
The NHS and DWP could save a fortune if they could employ some of amateur medical experts who can judge and diagnose others just by looking at them. You don't even know what pass or discount another passengers eligible for, or why they need someone with them, and neither are drivers.
I guess they still have Alf Garnett in mind getting into West Ham in a Wheelchair on a concessionary ticket with the carer getting in free.

 

[Dai Corner]

See, here you get the same judgemental accusations towards people using bus passes as benefit claimants get from those who watch Jeremy Kyle and read the Daily Mail.
The NHS and DWP could save a fortune if they could employ some of amateur medical experts who can judge and diagnose others just by looking at them. You don't even know what pass or discount another passengers eligible for, or why they need someone with them, and neither are drivers.
I guess they still have Alf Garnett in mind getting into West Ham in a Wheelchair on a concessionary ticket with the carer getting in free.

I don't think anybody's suggested there are people holing disabled passes who don't deserve them in this thread.

 

[nanstallon]

So, the two main issues at hand are that:

1. Some people are not personally entitled to use a concessionary pass to obtain free travel, but are either using someone else's (fraud) or by travelling as a companion to a companion passholder (not fraud), and,
2. Some people are rude (true), and some of those people hold bus passes.

(1)
Up to the pandemic, the National Fraud Initiative identified that the use of deceased or no-longer-valid passes totals to around £1.9 million - £2.2 million annually, set against a general overall spend of £1.1 billion - £1.2 billion on concessionary travel schemes nationally (£780,000 - £880,000 excluding London), depending on what year you look at. So around 0.15%-0.2% of overall spend on concessionary travel is detectable fraud.

9.4 million older and disabled concessionary travel passes were in use England in 2017/18 – with 90% of those concessionary passes given to older people and 10% to disabled people. Of those eligible to have a concessionary pass through age, only 78% have one: while some of this is deliberate non-uptake, for some the bus isn't actually a useful option, and some LAs offer a free Senior Railcard in lieu of a bus pass.

Recouping (for example) £300 per pass would cost between 3-9% (depending on what you include in cost of sale, but card fees alone will be 3%+ and cash handling costs aren't any lower), so between £1 and £3 per pass. This would need to be undertaken every 5 years (along with pass expiry) so assume 20% are applied for or renewed each year. Thus, if we were to shift some funding of ENCTS to this passholder-paying situation, the overall cost of sale would be between £16 million and £42 million a year, vastly outnumbering the cost of fraud (which is only estimated, and of course would still take place - we haven't fixed this), and you would almost certainly have to procure some administration to manage means testing, which would also still be required for disabled concessionary travel. Some people would, indeed, be dissuaded, but the overall cost of funding probably wouldn't decrease, due to the unwanted detrimental effect on bus networks. Also, the decreased societal benefit would likely hit NHS costs, social care costs, and spread burden across other civil and voluntary services.

All these numbers are a bit hand-wavy, but the key take-away is that the cost of pass-payment would be around an order of magnitude greater than the currently apparent loss.

(2)
Moving on...this perceived individual sense of 'entitlement' or pushiness...

• Some people are rude, and of that subset, some are entitled to free travel.
• Some people are not rude, and probably should be boarding first and have a seat, and the best way of doing so is to be at the front of the queue.
• Rudeness is entirely subjective.

That's life, and one's memory or experience of such situations tends to over-represent those which have caused annoyance - this is brain chemistry, not transport policy. Complaints of this sort frequently trundle on into ad hominem or straw-man attacks based on a non-representative sample of the group in question. At best this is exceedingly tiresome, and at worst this becomes an attack on others' rights and benefits with the express intention of reducing or removing these rights or benefits.

(Back to 1)
Regarding "lad from York", or any of the other substitutes for "a concessionary passholder with a valid companion entitlement", I don't have a great deal of sympathy for those who are agitated about this passholder's chosen companions. The diversity of needs which might cause one to need a companion (and be eligible for a companion entitlement) is huge and not at all easy to judge at a glance at a bus stop. If a passholder has a companion entitlement, they can choose to bring their best friend, a stranger at a bus stop or Christine Ohuruogu on the trip with them. It's not up to a bystander, or the driver, or the revenue inspection staff, to evaluate the need for a companion, nor the companion's ability to pay for their own travel. The sole requirement of a 'companion' is that they are capable of providing the support required by the passholder. Anyone insinuating that passholders should have to identify a companion, or specify a companion, needs to think about why you might need ad hoc support to travel, and aspire to better understanding and empathy for those that do need and have use of these passes.

On that point, it's also not up to an onlooker, the driver, or any inspection staff to determine whether a passholder is visiting a sick relative, going to the roller-derby, going down the bookies to bet their giro on the horses, going to foment revolution at their local CIU club, going to foment recession at their local Conservative club, or simply trolling back and forth on a scenic bus route at leisure: no reason for the journey has to be specified.

It is definitely true to say that there's nearly zero identification of ENCTS passholders going on, but the sheer cost of stopping to inspect every card in dwell time alone would be crippling for bus services. ENCTS fraud of all kinds is a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of cost control. There are far bigger problems to face, both in terms of operational costs, driver retention, other systematic fraud, revenue protection, and developing other appropriate sources of bus funding.

It's worth noting that many operators do not claim ENCTS reimbursement on a per-use basis, and have not done for quite some time: there are other arrangements in place, and it would be more representative to accept that ENCTS is a secondary, usage-driven but not usage-based, funding stream alongside other funding mechanisms, such as Bus Recovery Grant and Bus Service Operator Grant. Thus, usage fraud might not really be costed as a per-usage loss, as ENCTS is, for many operators, just part of the mix of core funding for supporting bus services.

I'll finish on my original position in post #39: whether you have "paid in" or not during your non-passholding life is irrelevant, and whether you're off on a jolly or visiting a palliative care clinic has no bearing: the whole purpose of a liberal democracy having a welfare state is to ensure that certain rights and freedoms are available to all, to exercise as they wish. If we've decided that "free bus travel after [age] or given [x] other entitlement" is one of them, and you don't like it, feel free to find a voting majority that agrees with you, and stop anonymously criticising other peoples' lives on the internet.

Sources
National Fraud Initiative: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-fraud-initiative-reports
A useful paper that collects some key ENCTS statistics in one place: https://bettertransport.org.uk/site...rch-files/future-bus-funding-arrangements.pdf

Well said - set out the facts, and it is obvious that we have some people with a bee in their bonnet who love to make trouble.

 

[contrex]

I do believe there is fraud going on though, as you say, your card stays in your wallet so no one knows if that pass belongs to you or you've stolen it.

When I got my over 60 pass, I at first religiously put it face up on the reader, so the driver could see my picture, until one day a driver rolled his eyes and said 'You can just put your wallet on the reader". That lasted until another driver rolled his eyes and and said "You need to get the card out". Recently I bought a used camera on Gumtree from a bloke in Keynsham. We agreed to meet outside Keynsham Church, where the 349 stopped. He was waiting, it all seemed above board, it belonged to his late father-in-law, it had a loose battery cover, he showed me. I liked the camera, paid the £15, crossed the road and got the next 349 back to Bristol. When I got a local bus home in Bristol, the driver looked at his screen and said "You didn't spend long in Keynsham, did you?". I was a bit taken aback; maybe the usage pattern seemed odd to him. I showed him the camera and we had a little chat about it, which held up the people behind me.

 

[lachlan]

Anyone could be a fraudster using someone elses pass. I don't believe fraudsters have a common look (happy to be advised otherwise). I do believe there is fraud going on though, as you say, your card stays in your wallet so no one knows if that pass belongs to you or you've stolen it. Why is it that young people have to have photo ID to prove that they are under 16 and pay the appropriate fare but conc passes aren't ID checked to ensure that stolen passes are removed and fraudsters reprimanded.


For me, it's not nesecarilly a case of 'why should I pay for it', I get why the scheme is there and it has it's good points but without a stupid amount of additional funding or restricting usage, there is no way for the reimbursement to increase. Low reimbursement is one of the key reasons why so many buses are being cut. Many routes, because of the concessionary passes, were struggling pre Covid and they are in an even worse state now. Restricting usage and combatting fraudulent usage would mean the money in the pot would go further and go a long way towards improving local bus networks. Especially in areas which are pass heavy.


Even as someone who thinks that fares should be charged, I think that there should be a low limit possibly set in law with it to be reviewed every 10 years or so to ensure that it's still a fair price but not too punishing to users.


Does the investigation include wider using someone elses card or is it specifically limited to using a deceased persons card?
The way to combat the fraud is to get drivers to check the photos on the passes. In the exact same way that they are told to do so for young persons tickets. Many bus operators now refuse to sell child fares to people 16-18 without a photo ID card issued by the bus operator or local authority showing that the person is a young person. If kids have to have their cards checked, ENCTS should be the same. Or start asking random questions which the ticket machine can verify (in the same way it currently verifies hotlisted cards) like 'day of birth' or 'month of birth'. Yes fraud can still happen but it would reduce it as people would mess up the answers. It's difficult to remember someone elses date of birth. You don't need huge investigations to happen. Prevent the use on the bus.

Buses are being cut because council budgets are squeezed. Have you ever thought perhaps we should subsidise buses more, instead of restricting disabled and older people? Increasing subsidy of buses, making them more attractive and reducing fares, would reduce car use too.

 

[markymark2000]

Buses are being cut because council budgets are squeezed. Have you ever thought perhaps we should subsidise buses more, instead of restricting disabled and older people? Increasing subsidy of buses, making them more attractive and reducing fares, would reduce car use too.

So your solution is just to throw money at buses. Where will this money come from? Despite what many politicians (from all parties I should add) may tell you, there isn't a bottomless money pit. Additional funds in buses just won't happen. Remember, we had the chance, lazy bus operators ruined it failing to make any effort to win back passengers (that's another topic though).

Council budgets are a good reason why routes are being cut but why do you think most of the routes which are being cut are those in pass heavy areas? If a bus full of pass holders can't cover it's costs, it won't run and so by increasing the pass reimbursement, you will have more viable routes as the pass heavy routes will cover more of their costs. If high reimbursement was paid for passes, you'd find less routes need subsidy.

Fares are high because of the stupid way in which concessionary passes are reimbursed. Put simply, the higher the bus fare, the more pass reimbursement the company gets. As an operator, you have routes which are pass heavy, you need to have high fares to get a half decent reimbursement.

High fares and routes being cut both have their roots in the concessionary travel reimbursement. Restrict the scheme more and then use the same budget to increase reimbursement.


The tweet got deleted as I think they realised what they had done but a bus company manager did tweet I think about 2 years ago now that if reimbursement was at 100%, they would have a commercial flat fare of around £2ish.

 

[Runningaround]

I don't think anybody's suggested there are people holing disabled passes who don't deserve them in this thread.

They are disputing ''York Man's'' mates by looking at them. They don't know his condition, they don't know theirs. Who pointed out that if a Pensioner can afford a pint they shouldn't be getting free travel? Do you add Disabled passengers and who they travel with too?

So your solution is just to throw money at buses. Where will this money come from? Despite what many politicians (from all parties I should add) may tell you, there isn't a bottomless money pit. Additional funds in buses just won't happen. Remember, we had the chance, lazy bus operators ruined it failing to make any effort to win back passengers (that's another topic though).

Council budgets are a good reason why routes are being cut but why do you think most of the routes which are being cut are those in pass heavy areas? If a bus full of pass holders can't cover it's costs, it won't run and so by increasing the pass reimbursement, you will have more viable routes as the pass heavy routes will cover more of their costs. If high reimbursement was paid for passes, you'd find less routes need subsidy.

Fares are high because of the stupid way in which concessionary passes are reimbursed. Put simply, the higher the bus fare, the more pass reimbursement the company gets. As an operator, you have routes which are pass heavy, you need to have high fares to get a half decent reimbursement.

High fares and routes being cut both have their roots in the concessionary travel reimbursement. Restrict the scheme more and then use the same budget to increase reimbursement.


The tweet got deleted as I think they realised what they had done but a bus company manager did tweet I think about 2 years ago now that if reimbursement was at 100%, they would have a commercial flat fare of around £2ish.

Good idea - cut the buses then reduce the ability to get to and from work. That'll reduce the benefit bill.

 

[markymark2000]

Good idea - cut the buses then reduce the ability to get to and from work. That'll reduce the benefit bill.

Or, limit the free bus scheme which is thrown around like sweeties, that then enables people to lower bus fares so more people can access work and travel sustainably. That then increases the amount of people travelling by bus, more people travelling means more buses so then again, more people can travel etc etc. No additional funding needed.


You just take a small bit of what gets said and throw it way out of proportion. Starting to think the reality is you're an entitled pass holder not wanting to lose your beloved bus pass.

 

[Dai Corner]

They are disputing ''York Man's'' mates by looking at them. They don't know his condition, they don't know theirs.

The suggestion was that 'York lad' didn't need a companion as he travelled alone at least half the time. If his mates were disabled they'd have their own passes.

Who pointed out that if a Pensioner can afford a pint they shouldn't be getting free travel? Do you add Disabled passengers and who they travel with too?

As a pensioner who will be catching the bus to the pub later I disagreed with that poster. Same goes for disabled passes.