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People who live in isolated communities use passenger transport to access employment, education, training and healthcare. Passenger transport in isolated communities is therefore a concern for not only the Department for Transport (DfT) but other Departments and agencies. The DfT must show strategic leadership in driving joined-up policy making to allow people who live in isolated communities fully to participate in society.
Older people, younger people, unemployed people, people on low incomes and disabled people who live in isolated communities rely on passenger transport and are disproportionately affected by inadequate or reduced services. We conclude that policy makers must take the needs of all those vulnerable groups into account rather than making potentially damaging trade-offs between them.
Policy makers sometimes equate 'isolated communities' with 'rural communities', but we found that isolated communities also exist in urban and suburban areas. We recommend that the DfT drafts a definition of 'isolated communities' for use across central and local government, which should be used to target scarce resources.
We recognise the importance of community transport, but believe that Central Government and local authorities are being unrealistic if they expect voluntary community transport projects to compensate for decreased bus services.
'Total transport' involves pooling transport resources to deliver a range of services. For example, it might involve combining hospital transport with local bus services. That new approach could revolutionise transport provision in isolated communities by making more efficient use of existing resources. We recommend that the DfT initiates a large-scale pilot to test the concept in practice.
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