Hospital allowances scheme

Vale of White Horse District Council
Abbey House, Abbey Close,
Abingdon, OX14 3JE
Email: comments@whitehorsedc.gov.uk
Telephone: 01235 520202

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Assisted travel and bus passes
Hospital allowances scheme

Hospital allowances scheme

The NHS Hospital Travel Cost Scheme (HTCS)

If you are claiming certain benefits you may be entitled to claim reimbursement of travel costs to and from hospital as part of a Department of Health scheme. To be eligible for help with travel costs under HTCS, patients must be in receipt of one of the qualifying benefits or allowances such as Income Support or Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, or meet the criteria of the NHS Low Income Scheme. For more information about this scheme see the Department of Heath website.

If you are not eligible for this scheme, and you are entitled to assisted travel in the Vale,you could get help from the Council's hospital appointments allowance scheme.

The Council's hospital appointments allowance scheme

This scheme may be able to assist people visiting local hospitals as an outpatient or as a visitor to a spouse/partner when they do not qualify for help from the above NHS scheme and are unable, or find it difficult to use public transport.

This scheme covers visits to hospitals that are in the operating area of the free bus pass scheme - which includes Oxford, Swindon, Didcot and Witney.

To be eligible for this scheme you must be registered on the Council's assisted travel scheme.

To apply for help please complete our hospital appointments allowance application form, which can be downloaded from the right of the page. This is a Word document, so you can either complete it on your computer then print it out, or print it out and fill it in by hand. The completed form should be sent to:

Benefit Services
Abbey House
Abbey Close
Abingdon
OX14 3JE

Please ensure that your form is signed by a member of the hospital staff each time you make a visit and that you print clearly on the form which hospital the journey was made to.

Upon receipt of a completed form, the Council will pay a maximum of 12 visits in any financial year (April - March) at 50 per cent of the public transport rate.