Nearly 20,000 free bus passes are now in the post to people in the Suffolk Coastal area who are entitled to the new national scheme which will give them the chance to travel free across the whole of England.

However, because of problems experienced by the company dealing with the bus passes, it may be that some of those 19,923 people may not receive their pass until Thursday (April 3).

“I would urge anyone who is expecting to get a bus pass to be patient as virtually all of them are now in the post and should be delivered over the next few days. However, the good news is that anyone with a 2007 bus pass can still use it from tomorrow, April 1, on all local buses,” said Cllr Doreen Savage, Cabinet Member for Customers and Partners.

“Once we got wind of the possible delay, we got in touch with local bus companies who have agreed to let people continue to use their old passes. This is just a temporary solution, as we have been assured that everyone should get their new pass this week.

“The company managing the new passes for us have been swamped with applications from councils across the country, and have already posted out over 500,000 passes. I will expect that lessons will be learnt from this first year of the national scheme, and the good news is that our passes last for between three and five years. However, I can only offer my sincere apologies to anyone whose pass has not been delivered by April 1 but can assure them they can still use their old pass locally until the new one arrives,” added Cllr Savage.

A few hundred residents applied for their bus pass after March 7, and they may have to wait a little longer for their pass to arrive as these applications are still being dealt with by the specialist company. The Government required the new passes to be smartcards, with an inbuilt memory chip, and are a big technological leap forward from the old-style photo identity cards.