Councillor Tett sums up up succinctly. Councils are forced to provide free travel via ENCTS yet are in no way obliged to provide the service in the first place. There’s only one way it could have ever ended, marginal socially necessary services are withdrawn hand over fist.

ENCTS is a failed system. 


The various figures online point to around 1bn ENCTS journeys being made annually just in England. If every journey was surcharged by £1 (payable by the passenger, kept by the local authority by way of deducting said £1 fares from bus company’s ENCTS reimbursement total) there would be an awful lot more money to keep services operating in the first place.