Community transport needs help right now. The DfT’s consultation on the future of permit use has gone down like a lead balloon, and CTOs across the country have responded by demanding much more clarity.
Until that’s delivered, the sector remains in the limbo that came its way over a year ago with the letter from the now-infamour letter from the DfT’s Stephen Fidler.
That is, the vast majority of the sector. Those CTOs that follow the rules.
Unfortunately, a group of associated Cambridgeshire CTOs elected not to observe the permit system. They abused the willingness of local authorities to award grants for what was claimed to be legitimate community transport duties but which was actually nothing of the sort.
All has been revealed in a report that was written at great cost to taxpayers, and subsequently exposed in the media. To the layman, what does that say about the state of community transport?
On one hand, the sector is justly pleading its case to the DfT. At the same time, the sordidly dirty laundry of a tiny minority is being exposed, with allegations of hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of wrongly-claimed grant aid.
This is not what the sector needs. Now, or ever.
