Taxicard under threat

The Taxicard scheme, is a life-line service which provides cheap door-to-door travel for disabled and older Londoners. Transport for All is calling on councillors to guarantee funding to ensure Taxicard members are not deprived of the transport the scheme provides.

At a recent London Councils Transport and Environment Committee, a majority of the capital’s local authorities voted to impose a series of limits to this hugely popular scheme. This was done without any prior consultation with service users and has been opposed by Transport for All and other groups of disabled and older people.

The scheme is funded jointly by London boroughs and by Transport for London. However, with the Mayor announcing that TfL would cap its contribution for the next financial year, a shortfall of £1.4 million was created.

However, rather than arrive at a more equitable way of funding the scheme – with boroughs like Redbridge and Barnet continuing to contribute nothing – all the shortfall has been passed on to disabled and older users of the service.

The proposed cuts include:

• An increase the fare per trip from £1.50 to £2.50 – an increase of 67%
• A reduction in the trip subsidy by two pounds, so members will be able to travel less far
• Fixing the maximum number of trips at 104 / year – that’s only one return trip per week, and a decrease of more than 30% in some boroughs
• End double swiping in the 25 boroughs where it is allowed
• Refusing new members joining the scheme this year – even if an accident or a decline in health means that they have no other means of travelling.

However, councils are able to continue to run aspects of the scheme locally if they provide the funding themselves. So the limits on Taxicard will vary from borough to borough.

Transport for All has praised Islington Council for its decision to continue double swiping (also known as stagecoaching) in the borough, which allows Taxicard members to use two of their allocated trips in one journey and double the distance they can travel.

There is no doubt that Council budgets are stretched. But we believe that increasing the number of people who are housebound or semi-housebound, unable to travel to see friends and family; to do their own shopping or get involved in community activities, is not an acceptable way to make savings., and may well be more expensive in the long run as it will lead to an increase in ill health, isolation and a need for social care services.

Taxicard members will, probably in the next week, be receiving letters from local councils telling them about the cuts to the scheme.

Email or contact your councillors and council leader now! Use the Yellow box in the right hand panel to find yours

Urge them to put in the money needed to provide for the shortfall in funding for Taxicard. In boroughs where double swiping is allowed, councils should recognise its popularity and save it.

Let your councillors know that some boroughs are making the decision to do this.

Tell your councillors the effect that these changes will have on your life. Perhaps you use double swiping to reach your nearest stepfree Tube station, and will have to stop using the Underground. Or perhaps you rely on more than one return trip a week to go to a social club or to get to work.