Diolch. Community transport is about providing flexible and accessible community-led solutions in response to unmet local transport needs, and often represents the only means of transport for many vulnerable and isolated people. Significant user groups are older people and disabled people, with a majority of services and projects working in rural areas, but, of course, not exclusively in rural areas.

Using everything from minibuses to mopeds, typical services include voluntary car schemes, community bus services, school transport, hospital transport, dial-a-ride, wheels to work, and group-hire services. Most services are demand responsive, taking people from door to door, but a growing number are offering scheduled services along fixed routes where conventional bus services are not available. Services are always run for a social purpose and for a community benefit, and never for a profit, ensuring a broader range of transport needs can be met.

The Community Transport Association in Wales represents 100 organisations, many of which are small charities, and all of which provide transport services that fulfil a social purpose and community benefits. One hundred and forty thousand individuals and 3,500 groups are registered to use community transport in Wales. Services deliver approximately 2 million passenger journeys each year, travelling 6 million miles. The sector is predominantly volunteer led, with nearly 2,000 volunteers giving their time freely to ensure that services can be delivered—a contribution worth millions to the Welsh economy. These vital services help to reduce loneliness and isolation, ensuring that people can access hospitals, GP surgeries, social events, leisure facilities, places of employment, shops and much more. However, despite the obvious positive contribution that community transport makes in Wales, the sector currently faces a number of threats.

The responsibility for community transport is distributed across all levels of Government, from EU regulations to UK Government responsibility over permits and licensing, to Welsh Government responsibility over how community transport operates in Wales, to local authorities funding and framing the use of community transport locally. It's therefore vital that all levels of Government together seek to find a solution to the current problems, seek to mitigate the short-term effects on our communities, and look to develop a strong and sustainable long-term future for community transport in Wales.

At a devolved level, the Community Transport Association has identified three key issues: that funding settlements do not enable long-term planning; that their members are not remunerated cross departmentally for the work they do, and that one-off capital funding may be necessary to support growth.

Whilst welcoming the uplift in concessionary fare reimbursement rates for community transport, they've also called for the formula to be reviewed for community transport operators. The reimbursement rate remains less than 100 per cent, and, while commercial operators can make that back elsewhere, community transport permit restrictions mean that they're unable to recover losses from those journeys. Short-term funding cycles mean that operators are unable to plan for the future and develop sustainably. Late funding decisions can lead to permanent losses, removing vital expertise from the sector.

The Welsh Government provides funding directly to transport operators through the bus services support grant, administered on an annual basis by local authorities. The amount allocated to community transport operators varies between local authorities. For example, the Welsh Government suggested that the Vale of Glamorgan Council set a target of £81,160 for spending on community transport last year, but they only contributed £28,200. The combination of annualised funding and lack of certainty of funding amounts makes forward planning extremely difficult, and it's therefore impossible for them to develop meaningful three to five-year business plans. It is particularly problematic when organisations wish to make capital investments in either vehicles or their organisational infrastructure.