Category: news
Our 2025 A.G.M is coming soon…
SAVE THE DATE: Friday 25th July 2025 11:00-12:30
Our 2025 Annual General Meeting is coming up & will take place on Friday the 25th of July between 11:00 and 12:30, in the Heron 1 room at Poole Court in Yate.
Please contact the office for information or to book transport….
More details:
We Are Holding a Poll to Decide The Name of our New Bus:
We have some sad news and some exciting news…our bus Dobby is very poorly and he was poorly at the end of last year as well so he is coming off the road.
We’ve been working really hard to reduce our expenditure and improve costs over the past few years so we are (luckily) in a position that we can just about replace him.
For names we’ve decided we’re taking inspiration from the Bard so any new buses will be Shakespearean themed!
Help us choose what our new bus should be called by completing our poll
📊What do you think the new bus should be called?A: HamletB: OthelloC:MercutioD: BeatriceUPDATE:
We’re pleased to announce the results of our name the bus poll!
The new bus will be called……
Beatrice!
Thanks to everyone who took part and we’ll let you know when Beatrice is on the road!UPDATE 2:
Beatrice is here and she is ready to get on the road, Click This Link to take a peek!
Our New Website is LIVE!
Last year we applied to the UWE CAKE (Community Action and Knowledge Exchange) project to have some free consultancy work, our project was a new website to supersede our long serving but aging original site. We were thrilled that our project was selected by a team of wonderful students that are in their final year. We met with Tom, Serena, Seb, Veena, and Elliot and discussed what we would like on our new website, and what Community Transport does.They have done an absolutely incredible job and we are pleased to announce:
Working with this group of fantastic students has been absolutely brilliant, not only is our new website beautiful, but they have taken the time to gain a perfect understanding of Community Transport and why it is important, we feel they have really captured the essence of Community Transport and that our new website really showcases GCT and the wider sector. You can also now complete a registration form online AND submit booking requests! We will be forever grateful to the team for choosing our project, completing the project to such a high standard but also really taking the time to learn about GCT. They are an incredible bunch of people and we know that they will go far in their futures.
Thank you, thank you, thank you Tom, Serena, Seb, Veena, and Elliot and we wish you all the very best for your final year and assessments, we think you will smash it
01454228706
Sensing Nature Walks at Westonbirt National Arboretum
Our friend Mark Austen along with two other blind guides are hosting immersive and interactive guided nature walks of Westonbirt that offer people, particularly those with sight difficulties, a different way of experiencing the arboretum.
Checkout this news story about the walks from BBC News Gloucestershire:
If you are interested in these guided Sensing Nature Walks Mark and the team have provided a schedule of their upcoming walks for this season on the Forestry England Website: HERE
Changes to our fares…
At our most recent Management Committee meeting we have taken the difficult decision to increase our fares. They last increased in 2023 and we need to take this step to mitigate our increasing costs as much as we can, we need to ensure that we are viable.
We’d like to remind passengers that anyone in financial difficulty can speak to the office in confidence.
From the 1st of May our fares will increase to:
Ring and Ride:
0-5 miles- £6.50 (this charge is for a return journey)
5-10- £7.50 (this charge is for a return journey)Anyone without a bus pass would pay £2 more on top of this.
Carers charge will increase to £5.00
Out of Area Charges:
£0.50 will be added, so if the fare was £17.00 it will now be £17.50 etc.Voluntary Car/Hospital Service:
The fares for hospital transport using our own vehicles will not increase but we are going to increase the admin fee to £2.50- the admin charge has not been increased since 2023 and we need to take this step to ensure that this service also remains viable.
The mileage rate will continue to be £0.50 per mile payable directly to the driver.Day trip fares will also raise slightly and these will be listed on the monthly programme.
We want to give passengers as much notice as possible about the increase so it won’t be implemented until May.
We do encourage any passenger that is worried about these increases to get in touch with us, we will be feeding back regularly to the Management Committee.
With our warm thanks for your support and understanding,
The GCT Team
Hospital Shuttle Bus Survey
As many of you will know, the requests for hospital transport are increasing each month….
We are so grateful to our volunteers but there are some journeys we cannot cover, we are wondering if a hospital shuttle bus would mean we could help more passengers. Volunteers would still undertake other journeys, so it may be that we have a shuttle bus to and from Bristol as this would serve the maximum hospitals.
It would still be door to door and with a lovely driver! It would mean that we’d have to ask passengers for a lot of flexibility, so you may need to arrive earlier than your appointment time and wait for a return journey.
We want to know how passengers would feel about this so we have made a short survey.You can find the survey here and you can complete it online:
https://s.surveyplanet.com/hvnvp3cx
UPDATE: Checkout some early results: HERE
We’re pleased to share the results of our 2024 survey
Thank you so much to everyone who completed this, it is not too late to hand one in if you haven’t already, we can update the results!
It shows some interesting insights.
- The majority of respondents are 80-90 years old.
- All respondents rate us Excellent or Good
- Most respondents use us for medical appointments
- Using GCT has improved passenger’s quality of life, life satisfaction, social contact with people, health and wellbeing and made people feel happier with day to day life.
We have tried to summarise the results but would remind passengers we always have open ears for comments, suggestions and questions!
Our passenger base is increasing along with the amount of requests we receive and we are advertising for new volunteers to join our wonderful team so that we can help more people. If you’d like to know a bit more please don’t hesitate to call us! We make sure volunteering fits around YOUR life and are so grateful for every minute and mile!
Last year we applied to the UWE CAKE (Community Action and Knowledge Exchange) project to have some free consultancy work, our project was a new website to supersede our 
We were thrilled that our project was selected by a team of wonderful students that are in their final year.
Working with this group of fantastic students has been absolutely brilliant, not only is our new website beautiful, but they have taken the time to gain a perfect understanding of Community Transport and why it is important, we feel they have really captured the essence of Community Transport and that our new website really showcases GCT and the wider sector. 
You can also now complete a 
