Genuine question re pensioner fuel payment cut

So now that you do know people on PIP get the £10 bonus at Christmas are you happy for it to be taken away from them too?

Yes, it is lined up with pension age outside London

There is no need for renewal for 5 years - or if you move to a differant LA.

To means test it would cost a lot and is unnecessary. It is not given automatically.

If your MIL rarely if ever uses her bus pass then it's not costing anything much apart from the cost of printing it and posting it out to her. The main cost of a bus pass is the lost fares, which aren't lost if people aren't making free journeys they would otherwise have paid for.

60 is a London thing and isn't funded by central government. It may be going anyway as Transport for London don't have much money anymore.

I haven’t advocated taking away bus passes at all. They’re used by people who need them and the only real cost is for journeys taken. I think bus passes are a good thing, especially for people lucky enough to live somewhere a bus service actually exists. More than happy to see pensioners’ “Christmas bonus” go and save £110 million, I didn’t even know PIP claimants got it.

Maybe stop making stuff up about other posters @2dogsandabudgie?

It isn't - this winter my choice will be eat or heat.

Exactly, and yet some on here would be quite happy to take away bus passes for pensioners as well and the £10 Christmas bonus, looking at you @blossomtoes. Not sure if she includes people on PIP who get the extra £10 as well, she didn't answer that yesterday.

With the cost of driving these days I doubt many on 12k would be able to afford to run a car.

My god, if it isn't bad enough that people think that taking away fuel allowance from elderly people who have to live on less than 12k a year is ok, now people think they shouldn't be allowed to drive cars either.

Not every driver over state pension age drives dangerously. Some do, just as some under state pension age drive dangerously.

The ageism on Mumsnet is awful. If you're lucky you too will be old one day.

Doesn't everyone only pay £2 for the buses anyway, that must cost a fortune, DH and I used the buses on holiday and he only paid £2 for quite a long journey.

Yes, they do.

Bus services cost money - loads and loads of money - to run. To make them viable, you should be getting loads of money back from fares.

If services end up being largely a free taxi for the elderly, I get that that’s “nice,” but it means bus services become a huge financial drain on local governments.

Long-term, free bus travel also tends to distort public transport provision, resulting in a lot more services being offered during the off-peak times, which stymies any attempts to get commuters to use buses and actually make a serious dent in car usage. It also distorts public transport provision in favor of buses rather than metro or trams, which are the “serious” options if the UK actually wants to shift its cities away from cars and towards PT.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jul/01/councils-in-england-hit-by-unsustainable-450m-bill-for-free-bus-passes

67 is way too early for this though. I could get behind making it free from 75 or so (to give people time to adapt and get used to bus travel before it becomes necessary), but the vast majority of people in their late 60s can still drive just fine.

Realistically, however, just flinging free bus travel at people is not enough to deal with the issue of elderly drivers (unless self driving cars become fully rolled-out earlier than we currently anticipate). The main issues are that a) some people strongly associate driving with independence and simply won’t give it up, no matter how free the bus is, and b) the UK is full of areas that are currently poorly set up for public transport; the services themselves are poor and the populations they are serving are too low-density for public transport to ever be a satisfactory solution.

Ideally, we should be building lots of nice airy retirement-friendly flats (balconies, shared gardens, all that kind of stuff) in mid-town locations at high enough densities to ensure that people are within walking/scooting distance of shops, services and public transport stops. However, this will mean tackling leasehold issues; currently retirement flats are often considered a bad bet in the UK as leasehold laws do not govern things like management fees strictly enough. Reforming leasehold to ensure that management fees are fair, reasonable and transparent (and other safeguards) is important.

Unless the UK can make flat living a more desirable option, it’s hard to know how this issue is going to be solved unless self-driving cars become a full solution very soon. Older people need stair-free homes, and bungalow estates require huge amounts of land per person and typically result in people living at very low densities on the fringes of cities, where public transport is just never going to work well enough to be a decent solution. Plus, the UK is generally very reluctant to build on greenfield sites more than necessary; I can’t see this country being OK with concreting over endless meadows to build low-density bungalow estates.

It’s all done online by local authorities, it’s part of someone’s existing job.

lol DF is 88 and still driving. his GP surgery is out of town and he uses the car to go there and make an appointment when the surgery does not answer the phone or there are 30 ppl in the queue in front of him. We need a lot more improvements to services if you want the elderly to give up their cars. DF also has prostate cancer so hes not going to struggle on buses

I think a lot of people are just spiteful and if it doesn’t directly affect them they don’t give a fuck
i think Rachel is out of touch about fuel cost to run a home as she claims her back through expenses

Bus passes are a benefit to society though not just to OAPs. They're meant to help persuade elderly to give up their cars.

And the entire infrastructure around it, i.e. admin, management, etc for applications, renewals, etc. The cost is a hell of a lot more than a laminated card! There's staffing, buildings, systems, equipment, etc.

The answer to the question is that the cost is for journeys taken. An unused bus pass costs nothing except the price of producing the laminated card.

The cut off is far too low. I don’t know how anyone thinks 11k a year is sufficient.

A quick Google says they cost £1billion per year.

There would be outrage. I do think it should be cut for some people but not everyone who doesn't receive pension credit as many people who don't receive that could still be on a very low income. Perhaps there should be another tier so that these people get some but not all?

I also was thinking this would be a solution. the problem being that it has to be applied for. In our county you have to have someone from an organisation like CAB, Age Uk etc apply on your behalf which would create a huge amount of work for organizations that are already overwhelmed from people in need. It might work if you could directly apply yourself.

I support cutting the WFP but not bus passes. The whole point in bus passes is to try and tempt dangerous elderly drivers out of their cars for the good of everyone, surely?

Our LA still has the household support fund, a good compromise would be to have a discretionary fund like this administered by LAs to effectively offer the same money but on a local level and when individuals apply