Get emergency foodThis August, Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced the lifting of time limits on concessionary travel passes, enabling disabled and older people across England to access free bus travel at all times of day.
The announcement comes a year to the day after a food bank-led campaign submitted an open letter to Andy Burnham, then Greater Manchester Mayor, urging him to make this change in his region.
Today we’re celebrating the achievements of the All Hours, All Voices campaign from over the last 18 months and the powerful contributions that food banks and their communities made in shaping national change.
How the campaign started
In spring 2025, Trafford North and Trafford South food banks partnered to join our Organising Programme and recruited former primary school teacher and Trafford resident, Joe Troop, as Community Organiser.
Joe joined the programme’s seventh cohort along with 11 other community organisers who, after training together online and at an in-person residential, formed a strong peer support network where they share ideas and learn from each other's campaigns.
Joe and the food bank managers quickly spotted a campaign opportunity when they discovered that Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) were trialling the removal of time limits on concessionary travel passes through August.
Prior to the trial these, passes could only be used after 9:30 in the morning, meaning disabled people who had to travel for work, appointments, or education before 9:30 had to pay the full fare.
According to our Hunger in the UK research, three in four people referred to food banks in 2024 were disabled so it was clear that a permanent change to concessionary pass restrictions could make life easier, and save money for people at risk of needing to use food banks.
Previously, at our Campaigns Festival, Joe had met fellow Community Organiser Tom Wardle who worked on the Better Buses for the Waterside campaign with his group Waterside Changemakers. After hearing about the Greater Manchester trial, Joe reconnected with Tom who shared learnings and made invaluable connections to national organisations Transport for All and Bus Users UK.
Through contacts he’d built with local organisations run by or representing disabled people, Joe began building a team of people who had a stake in this issue. He met Helen whose disability means she can’t drive to her job as a counsellor at a local university and has to get the bus before 9:30am, and Will, who after retiring took part-time work during the August free bus trial, only to find the travel was too expensive when the trial ended.
Campaign team, All Hours All Voices, began meeting regularly from October and soon agreed on campaign messaging and strategy. The team described their approach as “keeping our issue at the top of the mayor’s busy in-tray" which looked like putting their ask to Andy Burnham at public events, meeting key policy managers at TfGM to share how the change would improve their lives, and building noise with regular press coverage and spreading the word through their network of organisations.
What is community organising?
Community organising means bringing together a community of people who are affected by a shared issue to build community power, take action together, and overcome injustice.
As Joe’s Organising and Local Mobilisation (OLM) Manager, I meet him fortnightly to discuss his work, coach him through challenges, and celebrate successes. Every organiser needs something different to thrive, so building strong relationships and tailoring our support is at the heart of an OLM Manager’s role. Joe and I have developed a genuine partnership built on openness and mutual challenge, and I’m lucky to be learning as much (if not more) from him as he is from me.
People who need food banks to get by often don’t have much power over decisions that affect their lives. In his training on the Organising Programme, Joe learned that taking an organising approach could not only lead to campaign wins now but would also build the power that his community needed to influence decisions that affect them in future.
An incredible win
Shortly before Christmas, All Hours All Voices found out they had won – time limits on concessionary travel passes would be removed from March, enabling disabled and older people to travel unrestricted across Greater Manchester. Then, this August, PM Andy Burnham announced the policy would be made national, ending the postcode lottery for concessionary travel pass holders across England and unlocking disabled people's freedom to contribute to community life.
This is an incredible win for All Hours, All Voices, and the many other campaigning groups and organisations who have been calling for this change. In Supportive Communities and Unleashed Leadership this exciting win brings our programme goals to life - we've seen local and national decision makers understanding how they can help prevent hunger and hardship and in-turn adopt policy solutions to improve services, and a growing team of people with greater skills, confidence, and ability to change and improve services and support in their local community.
What’s next for the campaign?
All Hours, All Voices are still going strong and are now campaigning for discretionary +1 style companion passes which would allow disabled people to say when they need to travel with help from a carer, family member, or friend at no extra cost. After a successful day of action in June where nearly 2,500 letters of support were sent to 13 key decision makers, the group are writing a report to share with the new Greater Manchester Mayor, Bev Craig, and will launch a social media campaign led by group member Stuart.
Here in OLM, we’re looking forward to launching the Community Power Project where we’ve taken everything we’ve learned from seven cohorts of the Organising Programme, and from brilliant organisers like Joe, to develop our strongest offering yet. We’ll kick off later this month with our first cohort of Community Organisers; we can’t wait to continue building power in local communities and win more real changes towards ending the need for food banks.