Executive Summary

Transport Scotland is modernising the national concessionary ferry voucher system to bring it up-to-date with other national concessionary travel services. This will make the system more efficient and will provide us with better information about the journeys people make using ferry vouchers. It will also help ferry operators with data processing and will more generally help to maintain the integrity of the National Concessionary Scheme.

The system provides those who are eligible with four vouchers that can be exchanged for free foot passenger travel and to help pay for a cabin on some services. These are available to people in the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland.

The update to the ferry voucher service involves replacing the paper vouchers with digital vouchers that are stored on a smartcard. The smartcard used will be the same one used for free bus travel and which everyone who receives ferry vouchers will already have (and for which a process is already in place to handle distribution of replacement and new cards).

The updated service has been introduced to people in Orkney and Shetland initially (phase one) and is now being introduced to people in the Western Isles (phase two).

The ferry vouchers are available to those who receive free bus travel under the National Concessionary Travel Scheme, the eligible cardholders groups differ by island. These are individuals who are aged 60+, disabled, registered volunteers under 26, or those aged 16 to 21.

The above categories mean the primary users of ferry vouchers have protected characteristics (age and disability), making access, inclusion and equality a key consideration. This has been taken in account through the adoption of a user centred design approach to explore the best way to update the system. It has also reduced the risk by introducing the changes to Orkney and Shetland in the first instance, to understand and validate the needs of people there before implementing best practice in the Western Isles.

As the work has progressed, access, inclusion and equality have been investigated and advocated for via a user research workstream. Core project documents have also captured the importance of accessibility and equality, including the RAID log, capturing risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies.