Wednesday March 4th 2026
East Lothian Council headquarters
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Marie Sharp
Disabled adults will be asked to pay £780 a year towards transport taking them to day care and other essential services in East Lothian under new plans.
Plans to scrap a £2.50 charge per journey for social care transport and replace it with a £15 weekly flat rate are being proposed by adults services in the county.
A report to East Lothian Council’s Labour administration next week says the amount will be charged annually with 13 four weekly payments by those suing the service.
And it says the amount being asked for from residents still only amounts to just over seven per cent of the estimated cost of providing it which it says was £1.235 million last year.
The report says around 116 people currently use the social care transport service every week in East Lothian with the majority using it to access day support, usually five days a week with two journeys a day.
It says the £2.50 journey charge, which is currently in place, has proved ‘challenging’ due to “data availability and reliability regarding service usage” and had, as yet, not been implemented.
It argues a new weekly rate charged to all users across the year would be easier to administrate adding people who use fewer than six journey a week will be advised to fund their own transport.
Estimated income from the new charges is around £89, 700 with the report noting the council is not intending to profit from charges which means they remain below the cost of the service which is estimated at around £200 a week for users.
It also compares charges to neighbouring local authorities with Edinburgh charging £7.50 a day for travel to day centres, Midlothian charging £1 per journey and West Lothian basing charges on financial assessments.
It adds that Glasgow charges users £14.24 per journey.
Cabinet members will be asked to approve the change in charges and the decision to spread payments over the year.
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