From leaflets supplied by the Community Transport Association and advice of colleagues I have drawn this flowchart which, although not totally definitive, I hope conveys the same information as the chart I got from the CTA to answer the question of what a volunteer can do with their license to drive a minibus for a community transport operator (CTO).
My intent is to enable anyone manning a volunteer recruitment stall, such as at a village fete, could determine who can drive a minibus for section 19 or section 22 operations, both of which my local CTO provides, or should be steered to a community car scheme.
Without this, every volunteer has to do all of the homework I have done so far and will likely feel it is all unnecessarily complicated. I have asked the CTA to produce an official easy-to-understand chart like this or confirm this one is correct so I can publish this more widely.
A volunteer-run CTO operating a section 19 service can't charge a fare or stop at bus stops, as section 19 is for services like collecting people for a day-centre and this CAN be done by a volunteer with a B license. Any service that takes the fare-paying public has to be run under section 22* and that prevents anyone without a D1 licence driving the bus whether they are paid or not and only people licensed before 1997 can get a D1 (101) endorsement without taking the PSV test.
* although there is apparently an 'Class E' exemption for rural areas.
It is quite apparent to me from my role as a volunteer with my local CTO that there is going to be great difficulty ahead as the pool of D1 (101) entitled drivers dwindles over time because there is no other pathway at present to enable a volunteer who didn’t take their driving test before 1997 (so couldn’t be any younger than 31 years old now) to operate a vehicle on a section 22 route (one taking fares) without completing PSV training.
The cost of this training is a very minimum of £1000 per person and since a CTO might need a roster of 20 volunteer drivers per route, this is an unsupportable burden on the transport services that rural areas depend on. Volunteer-run CTOs provide vital services in rural areas where commercial operations are unsustainable.
I have asked my MP Therese Coffey to consider the need for legislation to correct this but I need to be absolutely sure I have my facts straight but at the moment this is how I understand the situation without bringing all the ramifications of vehicle size and weight into it.
I looked on the DVLA website for some licensing statistics but getting the actual numbers of D1 and B category drivers would take a FOI request but you can get a rough estimate based on that non-photo licenses are likely to be from before 1997- so D1 eligble - and photo licenses will be after 1997, so restricted to B category. If we presume similar numbers of drivers continue to be licensed and presume numbers of 70 year olds driving now will be decimated by health issues in their 80's; in just a decade's time we shall see a huge drop in available volunteers of active working age, just as the population bubble of elderly people (who will depend even more on public transport when they cannot drive) begins to swell.
The cost of this training is a very minimum of £1000 per person and since a CTO might need a roster of 20 volunteer drivers per route, this is an unsupportable burden on the transport services that rural areas depend on. Volunteer-run CTOs provide vital services in rural areas where commercial operations are unsustainable.
I have asked my MP Therese Coffey to consider the need for legislation to correct this but I need to be absolutely sure I have my facts straight but at the moment this is how I understand the situation without bringing all the ramifications of vehicle size and weight into it.
I looked on the DVLA website for some licensing statistics but getting the actual numbers of D1 and B category drivers would take a FOI request but you can get a rough estimate based on that non-photo licenses are likely to be from before 1997- so D1 eligble - and photo licenses will be after 1997, so restricted to B category. If we presume similar numbers of drivers continue to be licensed and presume numbers of 70 year olds driving now will be decimated by health issues in their 80's; in just a decade's time we shall see a huge drop in available volunteers of active working age, just as the population bubble of elderly people (who will depend even more on public transport when they cannot drive) begins to swell.
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