I will be 66 in 9 months time, reaching the current state pension age, and will therefore be eligible for an ENCTS pass in England. When I took early retirement with a work pension back in 2014, it was something that I never expected to get in its current form. In these forums there were numerous comments that it was unaffordable. I fully expected that by the time I reached state pension age it would be cut back to something like half price travel or just valid in your own local authority. Does anyone here have any views about whether it will be likely to remain in its current form for the foreseeable future.
If I am correct, in England, the ENCTS pass was always linked to the female retirement age, which pre 2010 was 60. Since then it has slowly risen and is now currently 66 and will soon rise to 67. Retirement age for men and women is now the same. Therefore before 2010, men who didn’t retire until they were 65 were entitled to a pass at 60 even though they could be working full time for at least another 5 years.
Since I retired 7 years ago, whenever I have been going away on holiday in other areas of England, I have researched the availability of bus day and weekly tickets and especially multi operator tickets. I’ve got quite used to paying for weekly bus tickets when I’m on holiday and it’s taking quite a bit of getting into my head that from October I will actually have the equivalent of a free multi operator ticket for the whole of England.