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Community groups get help set up their own volunteer mini-bus service

Villages and neighbourhood groups wanting to set up their own community bus service will get a big help from today.

A £100,000 Community Transport Development Fund opens today in Wiltshire for anyone wanting to set up and run their own local volunteer bus service.

It's run by Community First and will help individual community groups with driver training, recruiting people, admin, legal costs and even the vehicles themselves.

Funded by Wiltshire Council the service will assist existing Community Transport (CT) organisations – such as community minibus groups and Link schemes - by providing direct operational assistance to help with expansion.

The enterprise will also provide development assistance to community groups wishing to establish CT schemes for the first time including a web-based CT start-up toolkit.

Communities looking to set up their own new CT services are also likely to be able to make applications to the Fund to trial and start-up services.

Community First’s ACCELERATE service and the CT Development Fund have both been developed in response to changing public transport services locally as well as other factors which increase the potential demand for CT services such as an ageing population.

For more details email: transport@communityfirst.org.uk, call 01380 732817 or click HERE.

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