All Day August 2023
Background:
The ENCTS (England National Concessionary Travel Scheme) enables people who have reached pensionable age or who have specific disabilities, to use their free bus pass to travel on all local buses throughout England between the hours of 9.30am and 11pm on Monday to Fridays and all day at weekends and on bank holidays. During Covid many of these passholders stopped using buses and off-peak bus patronage remains at 60-70% of pre-Covid usage rates.
All Day August 2023
Kent County Council (KCC) has worked with the county’s bus operators to deliver an initiative which will allow all ENCTS passholders the ability to use their passes all day throughout August. Instead of waiting until 9.30AM to use their passes, passholders will be able to board buses from the time the first bus starts running in the morning and their passes will be accepted for travel. The initiative is one of a number of fares initiative being funded by Government and being delivered through Kent’s Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP). Medway Council are running a similar promotion in their area over the same period.
Passengers who travel outside of Kent and Medway will need to wait until 9.30AM as usual to use their bus passes and from the 1st September the times passes can be used for bus travel will return to normal.
It is hoped that this initiative will support the bus network in Kent by encouraging people to use buses again after the pandemic.
Publicity
Communications publicising All Day August are underway. Posters will be distributed to bus operators, gateways and libraries and we will engage with , social media, local newspapers, radio. parish, borough and district councils.
Information about All Day August will be available at the website address www.kent.gov.uk/alldayaugust and the web address will be referenced in all our PR.
The DfT will support our communications by releasing supportive tweets from the Minister, Richard Holden,
Please visit www.kent.gov.uk/alldayaugust for further information about All Day August, or contact jean.molloy@kent.gov.uk.
