CT Grant Application – Guidance Notes

Below you will find more information about Community Transport and guidance notes for the sections of the grant application form.

Community Transport information

  • Every year in our region, thousands of people are supported by Community Transport (CT) staff and volunteers to stay independent, participate in their communities and access vital public services like doctors’ appointments, leisure and employment.

    Community Transport is about providing flexible and accessible community-led solutions in response to unmet local transport needs and can be the only means of transport for many our vulnerable and isolated residents – often older people, or those with disabilities. Using everything from minibuses to mobility scooters, typical services include voluntary car schemes, community bus services, school transport, hospital transport, dial-a-ride, wheels to work, shared local/day trips and group hire services. Most are demand-responsive, taking people from door to door, but a growing number are scheduled services along fixed routes where conventional bus services are unavailable.

    As Community Transport is typically run for a social purpose and not for profit by charitable and community interest groups, it is often the most passionate, reliable, resilient, and accessible way of ensuring the broadest range of transport needs can be met.

  • Community Transport has enormous social and economic benefits to residents across our region. Its role in combating loneliness and social isolation, helping people remain independent and access vital service and engaging in their communities cannot be overstated. Through use of community transport, tens of thousands of individuals can access the transport they need, regardless of their location and circumstances.

  • The West of England Mayoral Combined Authority (MCA) supports community transport with grant funding to operators and by providing concessionary reimbursement to operators.

Grant application process

Operators are invited to apply for Community Transport grant funding for the period 2027-2029 using this online form which needs to be submitted by 23.59 on Friday 16th October 2026.  If operators would prefer to submit a MSWord version of their completed application, this should be emailed to [email protected] along with all supporting documentation.  For operators filling in the online form, please submit your supporting documentation to the Community Transport email address by the deadline clearly stating in the subject line that your email is in support of your application.

Any applications received later than the deadline will not be considered.

When the application process is closed, forms will be assessed and moderated by a panel of 2 MCA officers from the Community Transport Team, a member of the Grant Assurance Team as well as a colleague from the Community Transport Association.  Once the assessment and moderations have been completed and recommendations made, at least one member of the senior leadership team will review the documentation and then follow the internal process of ensuring authorisations, sign offs and sealing is obtained. 

Operators will be told of the decisions made as soon as possible after the closing date after which a grant agreement will be produced and sent to operators to sign that they agree to the terms and conditions of the grant.

For information: not all of the questions will be scored and will be for the MCA to understand the different operators in the region.

Questions marked with * are those that will be scored.  Questions that are not marked with * are not scored and are either for information only or to help you to plan.

Sections 2, 3, 4 and 5 will be scored.

Please note that for open ended questions, a maximum of 300 words is suggested unless otherwise stated.

Section One – Applicant Organisation Information 

This information will provide the Combined Authority with a main point of contact within the community transport organisation, with whom communication will be maintained as we work together to monitor services and improve delivery.

As part of our due diligence, the information provided in this will be checked against the information held by Companies House or the Charity Commission to validate operator credentials.

Section Two – Eligibility Checks 

It is important that operators are meeting certain aspects of the eligibility criteria listed in this section of the application. Of course, not all criteria will apply to your organisation, but we hope you can answer as best you can.

Operators within the NHS, statutory bodies and for-profit organisations are excluded, as these organisations are generally funded through other commissioning bodies. Our grants are to be used for the sole purpose of providing Community Transport, not for health or social care provision. Nonetheless, we still acknowledge and greatly support the fact health and social care sees huge benefits from good Community Transport.

For our information, we’re also wanting an idea of the number and types of vehicles you have access to as well as your staffing and volunteer levels.

Section Three – Services to be delivered

As we will be working together through this funding cycle, we are keen to establish not only why you’re applying and what you currently offer but also what you’d like to offer going forward.    We are also keen to have a map of where you currently cover and where you would like to cover as this will be looked at to try to avoid duplication and ensure that residents across the region have access to Community Transport Services.

Actual and target figures

As with previous grant applications, we ask operators for details of their passenger numbers/hires, resources/assets, and membership figures etc. This information helps us understand your current provisions, performance and capability as well as giving us a baseline to compare against ongoing monthly monitoring forms. If, for example, your passenger figures drop from your baseline by a considerable margin during the grant funding period, we may get in touch as part of our monitoring processes to discuss how we can help.  Conversely, where passenger figures expand considerably from the baseline, the MCA may look into providing additional support subject to affordability.

The target figures should be achievable within the grant funding cycle as historic targets were always aspirations with fewer operators actually achieving those set targets. For some larger CT organisations, it is the MCA’s hope there is ambition to set a target for expansion, particularly where operation is still lagging at pre-covid patronage.

Section Four – Financial information

This section asks you how much you’d like to apply for and what you plan on charging your passengers to use your service. 

There’s a section in the appendix which we hope you will use to help you to cost our your application and covers other funding streams you may access, how you plan on using them as well as growing your schemes.

Section Five – Specific questions relating to your service/scheme 

This section focuses on collecting some qualitative information around how your organisation operates as well as how your values meet or are similar to, the values that the MCA holds.   

We are very aware that operators provide so much more than just transport and that they play a massive part in their community in terms of social value so we are keen for operators to tell us about the impact being made.  This could cover (but not be limited to) volunteering opportunities, supporting your members and residents, supporting the environmental impact, improving skills for residents/volunteers/staff and so on. 

We are also very keen to find out what you think you do best and what you’re most proud to have achieved or delivered in the last twelve months as well as what you’re planning or would like to.

Section Six – supporting documentation and confirmation statements

For audit and transparency purposes, the Mayoral Combined Authority must be able to provide a record of evidence used in decision making as well as completing financial due diligence.  These supporting documents will provide evidence towards that objective.

As Community Transport often caters for the most vulnerable residents in the region, the Combined Authority must be satisfied that grants are awarded to organisations working in the best interest and welfare of residents and communities in the region. For this reason, the MCA have requested that operators provide copies of their safeguarding and equal opportunities policies, as well as confirming that they adhere to additional list of important policies.

If operators do not currently have their own maintained policies, we would expect that they are using a recognised sector organisations policies (we would suggest Community Trasport Association) or a similar voluntary organisation (e.g. Voscur) and that they are working to have their own policies in place. 

Section Seven – Declaration

Operators must agree to the declaration of accuracy.  A fraudulent application would result in termination of the agreement and cessation of funding, as well as potential action to recoup any monies paid.  This could also result in criminal prosecution if an operator was negligent as to the accuracy of the information provided.  Operators must ensure that information supplied is accurate or as near accurate as reasonably possible.  Sanctions will be spelt out in the grant conditions document attached to the grant award offer.

Section Eight – Appendices

Income for 2026/2027 financial year. 

This has been covered in section 4 and is to help operators establish costs, other funding streams and their use as well as plans to grow your scheme.  Whilst it is not scored and not mandatory, we would suggest it is completed.  Please note that additional funding and existing reserves will not count against the amount you are applying for.

Directors Declaration form

This form is required for compliance and value for money purposes and the Mayoral Combined Authority undertakes a rigorous due diligence process that is reasonable and proportionate to the value of the funding. 

If you have already supplied the Mayoral Combined Authority the requested documents as part of ongoing grant agreement within the last 6 months, you will not need to supply this again, but you are asked to ensure that this form is completed fully.

Please note that the word Directors also covers Trustees as we are aware that different organisations use different terms.