003415 - Preliminary Market Engagement (PME) for Digital Bus Passes (Home to School Transport)

Durham County Council (DCC) are looking to explore a digital alternative to physical Home to School Transport bus passes to reduce costs, improve efficiency, strengthen fraud controls, and enhance user experience.

The Council currently issues 7,000 physical passes involving manual processing, printing, and posting. This creates delays, requires high admin effort, and offers limited real-time visibility over eligibility, pass status, and usage. We are engaging the market to understand available digital solutions, technologies, and indicative costs to inform a future business case.

Scope

• Digital bus passes via mobile devices.
• Verification (visual/scannable) including offline options.
• Real‑time activation/deactivation.
• Technical capability to interface with other digital systems eg. Flexiroute.
• Fraud‑prevention features.
• Hybrid digital/physical options for users who are digitally excluded.
• Pass lifecycle management, including issuing, suspension, reinstatement, replacement, expiry, and renewal where applicable.
• Support for policy‑driven business rules (e.g. eligibility changes or temporary entitlement).

This notice forms part of our preliminary market engagement, offering you the opportunity to share feedback and comments before the opportunity is released for formal tender submissions.

Interested providers can access the written response questions, free of charge, by registering on the Open Portal at www.open-uk.org

The deadline for completed responses is Friday 29th May 2026 at 12 noon.