Perth & Kinross Community Transport Group
(PKCTG) brings together community minibus operators, car schemes, individuals and organisations with an interest in community
transport to promote and support community transport in the area. It operated
informally for three years before it was constituted as an independent association in 1998.
This set of social accounts covers
the activity of PKCTG’s Rural Initiative over a two-year period from April 2005 to March 2007. PKCTG identified the aims, objectives and activities it planned to undertake and set targets and tracking
systems against key aspects of performance. PKCTG also commissioned an independent
consultant to gauge the views of stakeholders. The information from these internal
systems and from the stakeholder consultation form the basis of this set of social accounts.
Just as organisations keep financial records
(accounts) and submit them to an independent party to check that the records have been properly kept and that the accounts
represent a true picture of the organisation’s finances, PKCTG has prepared detailed social accounts and submitted them
to an independent audit panel, as a means of verifying its own account of its performance and impact and the views of its
stakeholders.
Two main funders supported the Rural Initiative,
the Scottish Executive’s Rural Transport Initiative grant (~£23,000 p.a.) and Perth & Kinross Council (av. £5,125
p.a.). A range of other small grants/sponsorship was also attracted to the project
from charitable, commercial and statutory sources. The funding enabled the employment of a part-time Rural Development Worker
and budgets for training and other activities.
PKCTG’s Rural Initiative had three objectives:
Objective
1: To promote community transport for people in rural Perth and Kinross
Objective
2: To develop community transport for people in rural Perth
and Kinross
Objective
3: To engage in partnership working
The social accounts provide a detailed report
on how these resources have contributed to achieving the above objectives and are summarised below.
Objective
1: To promote community transport for people in rural Perth
and Kinross
PKCTG
promotes community transport to local community transport operators, passengers & potential passengers; and public/voluntary
agencies with a role in the provision of transport. The organisation uses regular
meetings; ‘Getting Around’ leaflets; its telephone enquiry service; press releases and website to promote community
transport.
PKCTG undertakes a range of promotional activities, broadly directed at three key audiences
– local CT operators; potential passengers and actual/potential development partners.
The promotion of PKCTG to local CT operators is aimed at achieving a high level of engagement
with a range of local operators. Success is gauged here in terms of participation
in PKCTG meetings that provide opportunities for groups to share information and experience with other local CT operators,
but also with a wider range of agencies with interests or influence in the CT sector.
PKCTG provides regular meetings in both Perth and rural
locations to promote participation by rural CT operators. The meetings allow
the RDW and Officers Group to engage with a range of organisations and issues in a relatively cost effective way – compared
to meeting with individual groups alone. Although participation in meetings has
declined slightly from a high in 2004/5, stakeholders continue to refer to feeling good about high levels of participation.
Potential passengers are a ‘hard to reach’ audience. The challenge is to enable appropriate information and services to reach relatively small numbers of people
with limited mobility who are dispersed across a wide area. PKCTG has chosen
to do this by distributing ‘Getting Around’ leaflets to every rural household.
Although there can be little doubt that the leaflets do reach the households of potential CT passengers, there is little
evidence for the impact of these leaflets in terms of new enquiries to community transport operators or others.
Objective
2: To develop community transport for people in rural Perth
and Kinross
PKCTG seeks to improve both
the quality and quantity of community transport provision. To date PKCTG has
sought to build relationships with existing and experienced local CT operators to achieve both goals.
Newsletters, briefings and meetings
have provided opportunities for PKCTG’s Rural Development Worker to keep community transport groups up to date with
changes in legislation, good practice and funding opportunities. There is a close
relationship between the promotion and development of community transport, reflected in the contribution of information and
PKCTG meetings to both objectives.
Training for volunteer drivers and passenger assistants is an important part of PKCTG’s activities. Most recently the emphasis has shifted from provision of minibus driver training for
volunteers, to the provision of training for trainers (Driver Assessor Training) to ensure that these skills are retained
locally in the voluntary sector.
The move towards undertaking
a training needs analysis reflects a desire to make PKCTG’s investment in training more strategic and to be ready to
tackle issues before they come to a crisis.
Objective
3: To engage in partnership working
PKCTG has worked closely since
its inception with Perth & Kinross Council’s Public Transport Unit, and the Council has contributed increasing levels
of funding since 2002/3.
This positive relationship has enabled PKCTG
to play an active role in the Transport Joint Working Opportunities Group (TJWOG), contributing time from both its paid and
voluntary officers. Consequently, PKCTG has good contacts with the Council, NHS
hospital sites, and Ambulance Service. Local CT operators have contributed to
the consultation and feasibility study led by the TJWOG.
There are fewer identifiable outcomes from
engaging in the community planning process, however a number of useful contacts have emerged and PKCTG remains hopeful that
consistent participation will keep community transport on the community planning agenda.
PKCTG has begun to identify community transport
operators in other parts of the Tayside and Central regional transport partnership area and has done more than any other group
to build relationships across the community transport sector and with the partnership.
Comparison with Past Performance
PKCTG shows an improvement on all performance measures over the last audited social accounts
for the period 2001/2 – 2002/3. There is an improvement on most performance
measures over reported performance in the 2003/4 – 2004/5 social accounts.
Overall, the stakeholder survey reported, “a general
feeling that the performance and efficiency of the PKCTG has improved greatly over the last few years - more information is
being distributed, training is happening, meetings are better attended, the members are more involved. However, still more could be done if there were more available resources.”
The Future
Stakeholders suggest that PKCTG
should continue with activities under all three objectives, and provide ideas for the future.
This
set of social accounts not only provides PKCTG with an independently verified assessment of its performance to date, but with
options and ideas for the future. The report will be considered by the management
committee and will actively feed into future plans. All our stakeholders will
receive copies of this Summary Report.
