Community Transport
Involve’s transport service is available for people who are unable to drive, or manage on public transport because of age, frailty, illness, disability or injury. It is provided by a fantastic team of volunteer drivers.
Clients must live within the Maidstone and Malling area, however journeys can be made to anywhere in the UK. We cover trips to London hospitals as well as specialist hospitals and clinics across the country.
What is the community transport service?
We will take your booking details via email or over the phone and send them onto our volunteer drivers to check their availability to take the trip. Once we have established availability we will confirm the booking with you.
We require at least 2 week’s notice for booking requests and will try our best to find a driver, this is an extremely busy service!
We can offer 3 types of trips: one way, wait and return (driver will wait up to 2 hours), double (appointment is over 2 hours, driver will return home and collect at a later time)
Example of trip charges:
One-way trip
- Driver’s home to client home
- Client’s home to destination
- Destination to driver’s home
Wait and return
- Driver’s home to client home
- Client’s home to destination
- Wait for up to 2 hours
- Destination to client’s home
- Client’s home to driver’s home
Double trip
- Driver’s home to client’s home
- Client’s home to destination
- Destination to driver’s home
- Driver will return when required – please advise in advance
- Driver’s home to destination
- Destination to client’s home
- Client’s home to driver’s home
Our volunteer drivers use their own cars so clients must be able to get in and out of a standard car. We have one volunteer driver with a wheelchair accessible vehicle for those who cannot get out of their wheelchair when travelling.
The drivers will assist if clients are frail, and where happy to put foldable mobility aids in the boot e.g. wheelchairs, frames, rollators etc. If this is the case please let us know in advance.
All our friendly drivers are volunteers who make trips in their spare time. Each driver has an enhanced DBS check and their own car insurance which covers volunteer driving.
There is a charge for the service as follows:
Booking fees
- £4 per standard booking (trip within 75 miles)
- £2.50 per person for group travel – two or more passengers from different addresses (within 75 miles)
- £10 long journey bookings (over 75 miles/outside of Kent)
We also charge 50 pence per mile – this is calculated for the driver’s full mileage cost for doing each trip.
Cash payments – clients can pay the driver direct with cash on the day of the trip
Cheque or BACs – for clients who are unable to handle cash we are happy to invoice via post or email directly to the client or family member which can be paid via cheque or BACs.
Get in touch
To find out more about Involve’s community transport service and to book a trip, get in touch.
Our impact
Our drivers drove over 25,000 miles last year which is the equivalent of driving round the entire world once .
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