SENIOR citizens living in the Bromsgrove area will enjoy free bus travel throughout the district with effect from October.

Bromsgrove District Council has consistently, over many years, provided aged residents with travel concessions which provided free travel up to prescribed distances, or, in the case of journeys over prescribed distances, partially free and partially at half-fare.

When the Government introduced a national minimum concession of half-fare travel, however, they also brought into eligibility additional groups of people, and this meant the budget provided by Bromsgrove council was not sufficient to fund the extra costs. Consequently, local concessions were reduced.

At a meeting on August 20 Bromsgrove council agreed to provide the necessary funding to enable totally free travel on bus journeys beginning and ending in the district putting the concession into the bracket of most generous and comprehensive in the country.

Recognising this may not quite fit the requirements of elderly residents living in communities located on the periphery of the district, however, the authority's new scheme enables those who have traditionally shopped in centres outside the district, to choose an alternative concession which gives free travel in their local area and beyond the boundary of the district to such centres as Stourbridge, Halesowen, Northfield, Kings Heath and Solihull, and half-fares in the remainder of the Bromsgrove district extending as far as Birmingham.

Council leader, Councillor Dennis Norton, (Con-Norton) said: "I am delighted that Bromsgrove council, one of only six district councils in the country to receive no revenue support from the Government, has been able to manage its finances so well that we have been able to deliver this very substantial improvement in help to the older members of our community.

"For the first time we have been able to provide truly free bus travel in the district for those who find the cost of travel for day to day needs prohibitive," he added.

But Labour group leader, Cllr Peter McDonald (Uffdown and Waseley), claimed pensioners will be worse off under the new scheme which he claims is too complicated.

"Whatever option they take they will never have free travel within the district and limited travel outside of the district," he said.

"To hold a car park permit and a bus pass will now cost £30. Senior citizens have been clearly taken for a ride by a miserly council that treats them so unfairly."