I live in a rural area which is of less affluence than Dorset. There are large numbers of "young retirees" who have retired, sold up and moved to the country. We almost all have cars, if we didn't we would never have been able to look for houses in rural communities!
I just don't understand why so many contributors are advocating forcing more and more restrictions or doing away altogether with such a precious benefit for the elderly which, whilst not "free", is hardly ever of detriment to fare-paying passengers. I used our local weekly village minibus - and paid the full adult fare - until I was of pensionable age last month, but often I was the only payer on an almost-full bus and if the ENCTS passholders had not used it, whether they "needed" to or not, it would have been terminated as unviable.
I am unsure that encouraging the elderly to live in rural communities is a good idea, bearing in mind that the cost of delivering almost any kind of service to these people is going to be more expensive per head than that of an urban dweller, and therefore likely to be subsidised by the urban dwellers for the lifestyle choice of the fortunate few.
Not sure if you've been following this and other recent threads on this subject, but (a) the level of fares for fare payers is higher due to the ENCTS scheme having to be subsidised by the other passengers in the bus [due to reimbursement rates being linked to average ordinary fares] and (b) subsidies for provision of socially necessary but uneconomic services have been decimated by Local Auithorities plundering this budget to pay for the ENCTS scheme. Both could be considered detriment. Whether other undesirable detriment would occur should the ENCTS scheme be modified or withdrawn is another matter!