Council tax bill: £1 in every £5 on bus-fare bill

£1 in every £5 paid by Cambridge's Council tax payers is being taken by Stagecoach and other bus operators to fund free bus travel for elderly people many of whom don't even live in the city.

The dramatic impact of the bus scheme has been highlighted in the five-year financial strategy just published by the City Council.

The bus scheme devised by Gordon Brown penalises places like Cambridge,which are forced to pay the bus fares for all elderly people who get on a bus in the city, including return fares for people who live outside Cambridge.

The result is that instead of costing the £1.2 million per year that is provided by Government, the scheme in 2008/9 is expected to cost Cambridge £2.5 million with the additional £1.3 million being met by Cambridge tax payers.

Whilst we support the scheme it is another example of Gordon Brown's Labour government coming up with a headline grabbing idea, failing to fund it properly, and then trying to make others take the blame for the problems.

Ian Nimmo-Smith, Liberal Democrat leader of the City Council, said

The way the government has botched bringing in free bus travel for the elderly is disastrous. We already knew the scheme was underfunded so we had put £680,000 into our budgets, but it is so popular that we now need to find a further £620,000 ontop of that.

Cambridge City Council could be forced to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds of services to meet this unfair bill we've been landed with by Mr Brown.

Cambridge City Council was rated as Excellent and as one of the top four financially competent councils by the Audit Commission.

The scheme is a good idea but the Labour government should play fair and pay fair.