The costs of giving free bus travel to the over-60s and disabled people has resulted in fare increases for young people and the scrapping of some services in Tyne and Wear. The Government’s formula for funding the national scheme has left Nexus, the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive, with a funding gap of around £5.4M – even after the Government stepped in to provide additional funding of £14.6M. Nexus, which covers Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland, serves an estimated population of more than 1M people. A Nexus spokesman said: ‘Unfortunately, some of the services we pay for will be withdrawn from service as a result of this.’ Children’s tickets would also rise by 40p for a single journey. The PTE complained that London had received extra cash for the national scheme, despite already providing free travel for the over-60s, while the funding formula had seen the Isles of Scilly in the Southwest given money, despite providing no bus services at all. A spokesman for the Passenger Transport Executive Group, representing PTEs nationally, said the high number of subsidised services already supported in Tyne and Wear meant Nexus was struggling to supply the extra services. He said: ‘The way the Government has handed out these grants could have been done with a greater degree of finesse. It is all very well giving out free passes, but what will be the point if there are no bus routes to use them on?’ According to PTEG, while Tyne and Wear was the only region to have suffered such a significant shortfall in funding – because of its high level of subsidy – other areas had also experienced difficulties in funding the free-pass buses.