PLANS have been announced for South Gloucestershire Council to become one of only a handful of local authorities nationally offering a youth transport concessionary scheme.

The council's minority Conservative administration has unveiled proposals to offer more than 10,000 young people aged 14 to 19 a transport concession to be introduced in two years' time.

Young people are to be consulted - via schools and youth groups - on the details but Tory councillors have already announced they intend to allocate £951,000 towards the costs of the scheme, matching the value of concessions with the average £91 per person cost of the pensioners' bus pass scheme.

They say options might include subsidised bus passes, some free bus trips, free young persons' railcards, taxi tokens or other transport benefits.

Cllr Sheila Cook, cabinet member for children and young people, is pioneering the idea.

"The number one issue young people raise locally is transport," she said.

"We all know how prohibitively high public transport costs are becoming in this area and that it hits those with a limited or no income like young people particularly hard.

"Young people have regularly raised this and the Youth Parliament is running a national campaign for concessionary travel.

"The costs of introducing free travel would run into millions but we do believe that as a council we can afford to make a serious move towards offering a transport concession locally.

"We have set the indicative figure at £91 because that is the current cost to the council of the pensioners' concession scheme and we believe young people have a strong case to be funded at a similar level."

Under the consultation young people would be asked identify how best they would like to benefit from this investment.

"We'd like to achieve a scheme in which young people themselves have played a major role," said Cllr Cook.

"The benefits we expect to see from this are improved access to services and facilities for young people, reduced congestion and the promotion of a culture of using public transport by choice which will hopefully continue in later life."