Voluntary Minibus Drivers
Voluntary minibus drivers help our community groups to take their passengers out for different trips – it’s a great way to see local attractions.
Our team of voluntary minibus drivers help local community groups to take their members out for a variety of trips. Passengers can be all ages and as a volunteer you’ll visit a wide range of destinations. It’s a great way to see local attractions and amenities, and to meet new people.
When you volunteer you will be able to meet and shadow one of our friendly team members, who will show you around and explain the process for taking one of our buses out, as well as where things live. You’ll also have a good chat with our manager or deputy manager about the processes you need to follow.
More about the journeys
Many of our voluntary minibus drivers have a favourite type of journey: we’re happy to work around what you prefer! There are varied opportunities, from Ring and Ride bookings to community group trips and hospital journeys.
As a volunteer you either choose a set day that you can be available for us, or you can be open to ad-hoc requests and then chose which journeys you’d like to do. Some people like to be included in our volunteer mailing list and some people prefer phone calls.
Volunteer minibus drivers receive information in advance, and we have a sat nav in a few of our vehicles as well as one that can be moved around the vehicles.
As a valued member of the GCT team, you can rest assured that we’ll support you, provide training, policies and procedures and team handbooks, as well as plenty of laughter, a warm welcoming team and friendship.
Training for voluntary minibus drivers
You can drive our minibuses with an ordinary car licence, you would just be able to drive our lighter vehicles, which are still fully
accessible and well used within our fleet. If you have a D1 entitlement or what is sometimes called ‘Grandfather’s rights’ you could drive our heavier minibuses.
Anyone wishing to drive our vehicles has a MiDAS assessment, this entails an online theory test which takes around 4 hours and then a practical session with a knowledgeable trainer. You can discuss anything you’d like more information on and part of this session is a driving assessment. We arrange this for our volunteers and cover costs.
Done locally with a supportive and knowledgeable trainer, MiDAS focuses on accessible transport and the differences between driving a car and a minibus. We cover the cost of this training.
Find out more about the role by clicking below, or call us for a chat:
You can make a difference.
Assistance provided by our voluntary minibus drivers makes a huge difference to our local community and our passengers’ lives. Equally, many of our volunteers comment on how rewarding they find the experience.
If you have any questions or you’d just like to chat further about about joining our team of voluntary minibus drivers, please don’t hesitate to give us a call or an email, we’d love to arrange a chat over a tea or coffee!