In bus pass renewals, there has continued for years, I found out last time round, an extremely dangerous system for all vulnerable passholder groups. After the renewal application goes in, you don't know in how many days your old pass will stop working, it's supposed to be a few, but happens without any check or confirmation on whether your new pass actually has arrived. Because folks are not alerted to this either, they can be using their old pass in good faith, far from home, when suddenly at any time of day it stops working.
This happened to me, randomly late afternoon in Leith, in my last renewal 3 years ago. That is why at this renewal, to fight this system and not accept this danger I have only put the application in at last minute before my pass expires, meaning I will take some days perhaps a week without a pass. In fact, I was lucky to find out that the council's "One Edinburgh" office, who issue the passes, closes at 3:00 on Fridays, and a decent hub library who would do the renewal by emailing them after that hour. So that it will not yet be seen or acted on during the weekend, hence should not affect my pass until after its expiry. It has still worked this morning - posting this on the bus in for today's ELAS.
Both Transport Scotland and the One Edinburgh office deny any power or say over when old passes stop working, nor do they say or appear to even know exactly who does work it, who there ethically should be public contact details for. According to that council office, the system is even worse now. They are now saying, that from as soon as the application is made, the old pass can stop working at unpredictably any time, and they have encountered cases where it happened immediately. This hammered in with insultingly excessive repeatings of the word "unfortunately" to pass buck and deny having any control over it. But this is while the MyGov site at mygov.scot/disabled-bus-pass/replace still says it takes a few days.
So instead of asserting a worse position than is MyGov's public info, this council office can, and ethically should, hold Transport Scotland or MyGov to that info to be accurate: contest the present unpredictability, on passholders' behalf, and tell passholders also who exactly to challenge as responsible for it. Lobbied to councillor on the transport committee.
31 May 2025
Jun 14 -
Councillor Kevin Lang, Almond ward, fine achievement to obtain this more definite info on deactivating old passes 7 days from a renewal application. This is One Edinburgh's answer to him -
NEC bus passes when renewed or replaced trigger de-activation of existing cards as a matter of course. However the timescales vary.
Lost or stolen cards and "hot-listed" as soon as possible after report.
Bus passes that are due to expire and need renewal, are either de-activated 7 days after a new card has been ordered or sooner if the expiry date printed on the card is within the 7 days. New bus passes can take up to 7 days to arrive, but most are delivered within two to three working days after application.
If a cardholder gets in touch about 7- 10 days before the current card expires with the relevant documentation to prove continued eligibility they should not be without free bus during the renewal process.
Bus passes may stop working if they become faulty, this can happen at any time, including during the renewal process.Human error can happen, so for instance if a card requiring renewal was incorrectly recorded as lost, it would cease to work as noted above.
The National Entitlement Card Programme Office in Dundee (NECPO) oversees the issuing authorities on behalf of Transport Scotland. NECPO may be the undisclosed agency referred to. NECPO have a feed back form and information about how to make a formal complaint at https://www.nec.scot/contact
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