Dundee City Council’s leading role in Scotland’s National Entitlement Card (NEC) scheme, which has over 2 million members, has been put under the spotlight.
A new report reveals that the NEC is at the centre of around 115 million transactions a year for services including bus journeys, leisure memberships and cashless payments in school dining halls.
The national programme is managed by a Dundee team, which provides support to all Scottish councils for the multi-application card.
Across Scotland, 1.4 million people use the NEC for concessionary travel and over 600,000 young people have been issued with a Young Scot card for discounts, reward points and the PASS proof of age scheme.
In Dundee, the card helps drive forward the council’s digital strategy across lifelong learning, young people, transport, health, culture and finance.
At its meeting on Monday March 8, the city council’s policy and resources committee approved contracts for the supply of a Customer Management System and Card and Bureau Services for the NEC scheme.
Council leader John Alexander said: “At a time when use of contactless cards has soared because of the pandemic, this report illustrates how Dundee City Council innovation has helped to develop a key method to deliver public services for people.
“Uses of the NEC and its popularity have grown over the last 15 years and I am pleased our city and team has been at the centre of these developments.
“This is about how technology can be used to help in people’s lives, to make massive projects like concessionary travel easy to use and to deliver.
“It is a great tribute to the forward-looking attitudes in our council that we continue to manage this successful national programme.”
Councillors heard that The National Entitlement Card is funded by the Scottish Government to support high-quality easy to access public services for all 32 local councils.
The Improvement Service administers the funds that cover the National Entitlement Card and have confirmed the continuation of the service agreement with Dundee City Council and funding to cover service delivery and new contracts.
Dundee City Council
Dundee draws skilled workers from a 60-minute catchment population of 640,000 and has a local population of over 140,000. The availability of a large pool of highly skilled labour is a key feature in the Dundee economy. Flexibility in the labour force is currently more prevalent in Dundee than in Scotland as a whole. All forms of labour market flexibility - part-time, temporary employment, self-employment and shift work - are widely operational within the city. Labour force stability in the city is excellent, enabling companies to plan with confidence. Labour turnover levels are less than 5% and absenteeism averages 2%.
