This was the third and final year in which we managed two public bus services under the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) ‘West Local’ programme, where the ideas for new bus services were developed and championed by local communities. We continued to work with Chew Valley Sustainable Partnership who did a great job promoting the service to local communities and persuading both WECA and local politicians of the case for maintaining good public transport in the area. Our X91 service from the heart of the Chew Valley into Bristol was extended to include a Saturday service, and continued to demonstrate good value for money, especially the commuter service. We participated closely and robustly in the evaluation process, following which the X91 was confirmed as an ongoing service – though not without some determined lobbying from colleagues. The second service, the 99 ‘round the valley’ service was unable to deliver sustainable passenger numbers and has now been discontinued, but a new service (the 100) connecting Bristol and Bath with the rural area has been introduced and should help fill the gap to some extent. Overall, although our work on West Local took us well away from our usual activities, we are proud of what was achieved on behalf of local communities who have been very poorly served by public transport for a very long time. Our successful volunteer car scheme, which enables people to get to medical appointments across the area, continued to run successfully, serving more than 200 people who might otherwise have been unable to travel to medical appointments. During the year more than forty public-spirited individuals supported the service, either as volunteer drivers or co-ordinators. Once again total number of journeys was around 1,000 for the twelve months. Chew Valley Community Transport continues to make a real difference to people unable to travel by other means – not just helping them get to critical appointments but also providing support and company at a time of stress.

For both services, our key stakeholders are the people who use our services. Our two West Local bus services have been built on extensive public consultation, through surveys that have gone to household across the area. This has enabled us to make significant improvements to the services, eg by demonstrating the demand for a Saturday service and to make small but important changes to route and timetable. For the bus transport projects, we were able to make use of an extensive social media network to capture passenger feedback, which enabled us both to deal with service problems and to plan future improvements. It also helped publicise the service and opportunities to meet both funder and operating bus company. Meanwhile, the volunteer car scheme gets regular feedback from both drivers and passengers, and we have regular coordinator meetings to review and take action where appropriate. Our volunteer drivers are important stakeholders too, both for their own experience and the direct feedback nthey get from our beneficiaries, We have an annues Drivers meeting which gives them an important opportunity to tell us what they think. As a small organisation almost entirely run on a volunteer basis we have no plans to introduce a more formal process, we simply don’t have time or resource.

Director remuneration during year amounted to £4,850, paid through secondment from our sister organisation West of England Rural Network, a local charity. Most of this was for large amount of administrative work required by WECA to support our West Local services

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration