The free bus scheme has been a huge success and a recommendation has now been put forward to initiate the option to extend the scheme as per the original proposal. However, in order to extend the scheme for this period the costs will be higher than originally forecast.
Total spend to date for the scheme, plus forecast spend to 31st March is £453k, to extend the scheme until 31st August 2022, the projected costs are £475k, bringing the total projected spend to £928k, meaning an additional £128k is required to fund the scheme.
This decision is to allocate £128k Free Bus Travel scheme from underspent schemes in the Covid Recovery Plan and extend the scheme until 31st August 2022.
This will extend a successful scheme within the Covid Recovery plan and ensure that underspend identified within other schemes can be fully maximised.