PLANS to introduce taxi tokens as an alternative to the national bus pass scheme in South Gloucestershire are still in limbo.

For the second time, ruling Conservatives on South Gloucestershire Council have failed in their bid to commit £500,000 from next year's budget to meet the additional cost of the scheme.

Labour and Liberal Democrats councillors once again insisted it was wrong to allocate the cash at such an early stage before the council was fully clear on what other calls would be made on its tight resources.

And they demanded that the proposal should only be considered as part of the council's overall budget deliberations in February.

The two opposition groups joined forces to vote down the plan at a meeting last week, despite Tory warnings that that delay would make it impossible to introduce the choice at the same time as the national bus pass and that introducing it later could cost the council an extra £100,000 in administration costs.

Conservative councillors, who form the minority administration on the hung council, have now pledged to bring the issue forward again in the New Year.

Council and Conservative group leader John Calway said: "There is absolutely no reason to delay the introduction of tokens. We can comfortably afford to fund it without introducing a single service reduction to pay for it and at the same time introduce other new developments, including weekly food waste collections.

"We can reassure the 14,000 of our residents expected to benefit from tokens that we will not let them down and will bring this issue back in the New Year where we will once again seek to deliver for the people that matter to us, our residents."

Labour group leader Roger Hutchinson said after the meeting: "This was an attempt by the Conservatives to bounce the council into allocating a huge sum without knowing what other call there might be on this money and without waiting for their own budget consultation exercise to be completed.

"This token scheme forms part of the proposed consultation, so it would be a sham if this large element of it had already been agreed."

He said Labour remained unconvinced that the scheme would benefit those who actually face transport access problems or that it would provide value for money.

"Residents who sign up to this scheme would have to give up their free national bus pass," said Cllr Hutchinson.

"£33 worth of tokens would not help the disabled or isolated to get out and about more than once a year."