London’s local councils are to carry out a review of the capital’s Freedom Pass, because of the strain that the cost of providing free travel to over-60s is placing on budgets.
Under pressure: free journeys by the over 66s is costing councils in London £372m a year
The Freedom Pass is paid for by Croydon and the other 31 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation out of parking permit fees and traffic fines, but in the next financial year, 2026-2027, its cost will hit £372million – up by almost 12%.
The Freedom Pass provides free travel on all Transport for London services and national rail services within Greater London (except during the morning rush hour).
The London Standard is reporting today: “London Councils, which administers the Freedom Pass on behalf of the 33 boroughs, is to carry out a review of the scheme and gather evidence for the likely impact of potential changes.
“Options could include increasing the age at which Londoners receive the Freedom Pass, making it means-tested or excluding national rail services within Greater London.”
Close to 100,000 people in Croydon are aged 60 or over, and so qualify for TfL’s 60+ Oyster card before they “graduate”, at 66 (state pension age), for the Freedom Pass.
More than 1.2million Londoners have Freedom Passes, where the cost of each journey is effectively paid by the borough in which each journey starts. London Councils has estimated that they will be paying for 279million journeys from April – 221million on the buses and 44.7million on the Tube.
The Standard says that the steep rise in cost of the Freedom Pass this year is due to the inflation-busting fare rises this year.
“It’s costing more than boroughs can afford,” Stephen Boon, chief operating officer at London Councils, told the Standard.
Boon said the Freedom Pass was a “more generous” travel benefit than that enjoyed by pensioners in the rest of the country.
“It’s more than a bus pass, which is what it is in the rest of the country.”
Removing the free train travel would reduce the Freedom Pass’s cost by £150million per year, according to Boon. But that move would require a change to an Act of Parliament: the Greater London Authority Act specifies that the Freedom Pass must include all TfL transport modes.
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