MiDAS Driver Observer/Assessor/Trainer Wanted

Halesworth Area Community Transport are seeking a second trainer for their driver and 'bus buddy' volunteers which
operate the scheduled 'Halesworth Hoppa' services.

Do you have experience in driver training, perhaps in a uniformed service? This is not essential but you should be familiar with operating vehicles exceeding 4250 Kg MAM.

Do you have a comprehensive knowledge of the Highway Code and are willing to learn advanced driving skills to become a MiDAS instructor?

Can you encourage and inspire volunteers with your patient teaching and effective communication skills?
HACT can offer you a rewarding role in helping to provide essential transport for many thousands of people by volunteering for just a few hours a month. Ideally it would suit you in weekdays but weekends or evenings are alright too.


You must have held a full licence  for two years for cars and mpv's plus be over 21 (plus D1 or PSV entitlement) for minibuses.


You will need to successfuly attend a MiDAS Driver Assessor/Trainer course which is six days over two weeks and involves classroom work, preparation and delivery of a short presentation, safety and handling practicals and of course driving culminating in providing an observed drive of a satisfactory standard. Expenses would be reimbursed.


A MiDAS Driver Assessor/Trainer will need to be able able to confidently and consistently demonstrate a high standard of driving combined with excellent communication skills to prospective drivers and current volunteers who require periodic re-testing. They will need to coach the MiDAS model in a class room type setting and demonstrate on the road so as to obtain the best from a wide cross section of ages and abilities.


Non-profit HACT has provided Halesworth with scheduled local bus services for nearly twenty years because commercial operators can‟t. The whole community depends on public transport being available for everyone.


HACT's volunteers are serious about giving a reliable service but they want to make it fun too. They are looking for that quality in you as well.


Call HACT on 01986 875900 between 9:00 and 12:00 for an informal chat to find out more. At other times leave a message and someone will call you back soon as they can.


Halesworth Area Community Transport, The Railway Station, Station Road, Halesworth, Suffolk IP19 8BZ www.hactbus.co.uk

Ordnance Survey GeoVation Challenge

From my work for Suffolk ACRE and my volunteering with Halesworth Area Community Transport, I have discovered how difficult it is to model and test new ideas about local transport provision. For instance, if you wanted to  change a bus timetable to be more convenient for Halesworth (or to save councils some money) you may well be messing things up for people in Kessingland and Aldeburgh. You might try to lobby your councillor to subsidise a service and be told there’s no demand for it, or it doesn’t fit in their budget, and you will find it’s very hard to get substantive data to make your case.

What’s person to do?  If only you had a virtual bus and train set; you could model how and where your public transport goes (and work out its cost) with the real schedules and see new ideas in action without spending many nights painfully typing timetables into spreadsheets, as I have done, because there’s no tool for this yet, though there’s lots of mapping and transport simulation software that could be tied together to make one.

For some time I have been thinking of ways to get this done but only heard yesterday that there is a competition that could cover the cost of making this idea a reality.

So please can you vote for my idea that can empower communities to plan transport timetables themselves in the Ordnance SurveyGeoVation Challenge. Would you do this ASAP as it closes on March 28^th.

It’s a competition for funding to build a website application that will display current bus, train and other public transport schedules from which users can visualise current routes and schedules and also enter proposed routes and timetables to see potential connections with other modes and the impact of amendments or new provision of services.

https://challenge.geovation.org.uk/a/dtd/108489-16422

It seems you have to register with the button at the top to vote.

I’ve spoken to software engineers who are working on things like this already. You’ve seen their stuff in the news and they tell me it can be done.

Don’t let the powers that be simply tell you the public transport your community needs can’t be provided. If public transport planning can be made truly collaborative; villages, towns and parishes won’t be pitted against each other for scraps from the providers table – in ignorance of each other’s needs - nor have to pay for transport subsidies with political patronage, but will be able devise services for themselves in all modes that can best serve them from the resources of commercial, statutory or charitable organisations.

I do this with my personal remit but through my work there would be a network of testers and potential users that could rapidly put this into national use.

Walberswick Community Buses

updated 5/11/12  see below

If you look for a bus service for Walberswick, Suffolk in the usual places, you’ll find there is only DRT services advertised.  However, it is very little known because the timetable isn’t published anywhere that Walberswick runs two 'scheduled' bus services of its own and these are free to passengers because they are funded with £4630 per year (in 2010) by the Walberswick Common Lands Trust, who derive their income from the £3 beach parking charge the Summer visitors have to pay.


Every 3rd Thursday of the month at 9.30 AM a minibus departs from from the Tuck Shop and, depending on demand, the lower car park in Walberswick for John Lewis in Norwich. I don’t know the return time but the bus - chartered from Waylands - apparently goes to another job then does the return run a couple of hours later. There are no stops en-route.


Every Wednesday there is a departure at 9.30 AM to Halesworth (on 1st Wednesdays of the month it continues to Beccles and Lowestoft), leaving as before and will drop passengers as needed at the Market Place or the Co-operative Supermarket. It waits for 90 minutes then returns. Again, no stops en-route, which is a pity for residents of Blythburgh as every bus must pass there.


Full details are a bit scant as the timetable isn’t published anywhere, even in the village, as it’s “just something you know about” a resident told me. I’ll reserve comment on the ramifications of that kind of presumption. There is a pre-booking system and a waiting list is kept as the service is often over-subscribed. Bookings are taken at 01502 724763


Sometimes the 15 or 16 seat minibus that Waylands supply (they're never quite sure until the day before) could have done with a wash but residents tell me they are very happy with the service and the drivers. The buses have a tail lift and there are passengers who use it. Though the bus doesn’t go door-to-door, it can stop anywhere it’s passing and the drivers are helpful. It used to have a £1 booking fee but was dispensed with when the WCLT assumed the entire cost. The bus contract is legally with the WCLT (the secretary is Jane Tibbles 01502 724448).


Apropos of a Handy Bus service, this is a very good example of a village (that is fortunate to have the means) of taking transport needs into their own hands and managing it themselves and has done so for years. The service was started in May 2007 on a six month trial and then only used to run monthly but demand steadily grew to where they are now.


Walberwick recently completed a parish plan. It has been put to that committee that opportunity exists to create synergies and efficiencies using the bus service to deliver other social care functions for everyone in the village. I hope those ideas - and many others arising from the consultation - will get considered.

From the Walberswick Parish Plan Stage 2 report October 2012

Public transport 

A large number of respondents (158) wanted improved public transport.
However there are already various means of accessing transport from the village to local areas that could be more widely publicised. Suffolk Links, which is a subsidised Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) service providing connections to bus and train links in rural areas, operates from Monday to Saturday and covers travel to Saxmundham, Leiston, Darsham and any village within the Blyth service area. Concessionary Passes can be used for this service. The WCLC provides a Wednesday bus to Halesworth three times a month and to Lowestoft on the fourth Wednesday. WCLC also runs a bus to Norwich, one Thursday per month. The twice weekly public transport to Beccles had to be withdrawn due to lack of uptake. Unfortunately there is no bus service to Southwold nor does the Suffolk Links service extend to Southwold; this inconvenience needs to be rectified.

Going Nowhere?

Without public transport serving its Market Place or going the length of the High Street, many residents of Southwold and Reydon in Suffolk have become isolated from essential services and feel trapped in their homes while the shopkeepers have reported a decrease in trade since the buses were banned from the town. It is well understood that such isolation has an enormous impact on health and if left unchecked, increased cost for the public purse will result.


One solution that could meet the conflicting demands that necessitated this £10,000 'experiment' is for Southwold to have its own community bus, running a scheduled local service in a loop around the town and outlying villages. Connecting with the inter-town buses, it could serve the tourism areas of the pier and the harbour and connect the residential areas and Reydon to the High Street with a small disabled-accessible ‘Hoppa’ bus able to navigate the narrow streets and around every thoughtlessly parked 4x4.


It is fortunate that nearby is the model of the Halesworth Area Hoppa, a self-supporting scheduled bus operating on four weekdays and driven by volunteers, providing the younger and the older resident a lifeline to reach essential services in their town. A number of potential models exist from section 22 scheduled public service to a co-operative chartering regular buses for its members; the 'Handy Bus' model I devised.


If there were twenty good men and women of Southwold and Reydon under 70 years old with clean driving licenses who took their driving test before 1997, prepared to give three hours a month (as people do in Halesworth) to drive the bus – and some others to be bus conductors - then running  a community bus in Southwold would be entirely feasible and affordable within the resources of this fortunate town’s many charities and benefactors and its revenue from the new car park. Government grants rapidly shift according to agendas but two presently exist to support transport initiatives and/or coastal towns.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/press_86_11.htm

http://www.dft.gov.uk/news/press-releases/dft-press-20111208a

But most importantly of all, there would have to be at least three visionaries prepared to work together to establish this community bus company and perhaps a dozen others to sit on its management committee every other month. Unfortunately, and I mean no disrespect to Southwold’s many civic activists, for it is the much the same everywhere, people can be persuaded to sit on convivial committees and be given titles with real responsibilities but finding volunteers who would be prepared to give up other responsibilities and their leisure to sweat over VOSA regulations etcetera in the beginning are much, much, scarcer.


But Southwold has a great and proud tradition of rising to the challenge. A bus might not be as sexy as a cinema or a railway but it does offer an opportunity to create something of lasting and great social usefulness; for without the fundamental infrastructure of practicable public transport, all other efforts will be for naught if the town - as a community - withers and dies to become a coastal theme park amidst the unsplendid isolation of its increasingly elderly residents.


There is a great deal of encouragement and support for those three people prepared to say “we will see it through” but it begins with them making themselves known.

Halesworth Activity Map

For the last two months I have been collating the information I can find about local activities and club contacts into a calendar and distributing it to the people who usually field enquires from people about local services, such servers in cafes, library staff and bus drivers, in day to day conversation. The calendar should assist them with being an information intermediary for the 'hard to reach'. With such information it has also been possible to make a referral tree as a poster and index to the calendar.

It will take some trial and error to perfect it but I hope it will be useful.

HALESWORTH CAMPUS CONSULTATION

On Saturday 21st January 2012 residents of Halesworth over 18 can cast their vote on the sale of the Dairy Hill playing fields by the Halesworth Playing Fields Association to enable a new ‘campus’ centre at Halesworth Middle School after it closes in July 2012. You must attend the Middle School, Harrisons Lane IP19 8PY between 11 am and 8 pm to cast a binding vote adjudicated by Suffolk ACRE.

Everyone in the surrounding area is also invited to the consultation to learn about these proposals and can have their say on what facilities should go there and meet community organisations.

There will be a free shuttle bus (the Halesworth Hoppa 511) calling at the Middle Car Park, Saxons Way, Durban Close, Holton and Harrisons Lane between 11 am – 7.40 pm.

For information about the campus project, see the library display or visit www.halesworthcampus.org

A too common mindset

This is a letter I have sent to someone today. Redacted out of courtesy.

Dear…

In response to your offer I came to XYZ last Monday to view the volunteering opportunities being listed with XYZ for the purpose of circulating them to other community groups. But it seems that you had second thoughts about sharing that information with me because, after your colleague tried to stall me by saying the folder was "being reviewed", you refused to show them to me and admitted quite candidly this was because; "then potential volunteers would go to those organisations directly and XYZ would be out of a job." After I protested at this, you then said that it would have to be a decision for XYZ’s trustees to allow this.

I appreciated you being so candid with me so I will be candid with you as well.

I would like to set out for you and the trustees my purpose and my position on this issue as it is quite disconcerting and unexpected that XYZ have adopted the role of selective 'gatekeeper' to this information and apparently consider someone else supporting local volunteering to be a threat to its interests.

Given the purpose for which you were established, this, quite frankly, is an absurd state of affairs as your charity registration states you must "act as an umbrella or resource body". As I only need to visit www.do-it.org.uk to find similar information on local volunteering opportunities being freely given and I presume voluntary organisations would expect you to market the positions they list with XYZ at every available chance, I can only draw the wholly unsatisfactory conclusion from your response that my purpose is being viewed with suspicion and distrust.

In my role as a Community Development Officer and in other involvement in the community we both serve, past and present, I have perceived a need for a complete calendar listing of local community activities. The listings in local media are never complete enough nor are their formats useful as a handy reference tool. Rather than see it as competition though, the community newspaper has welcomed the idea, as have several local organisations.

Also there is a need for 'live' directory of local agencies, services and so forth; one that is updated frequently, reliably listing where people can obtain help and advice on a wide range of issues, as for one reason or another, their provision is in a state of constant flux. 

There have been many previous efforts to produce these but they have not been maintained on an ongoing basis. I have countless examples of information websites which list non-existent social care services (mostly victims of reorganisation or funding cuts) and on which I have spent many hours trying to correct. I have measured that 15% of the posters and leaflets displayed locally are out of date (3 out of 15 that I collected from your display rack on last my visit were expired by two years) while there are many barriers to accessing web or location-based information. Each of these methods has their place but there is a great need for better coordination between information portals and providers to serve their users, especially in bridging the 'digital divide'.

My work has been funded with the aim of improving access to information about local resources by working with voluntary groups and community organisations because the potential they have to inform their clients through social interaction is found to be very effective with the 'hard-to-reach' and this method is preferred by many kinds of people with needs. In the most simple terms: anything that can be done to improve 'word of mouth' about opportunity and local activity closer to people's homes and anything that would assist in making a useful referral on the spot when a client discloses a need will greatly benefit the community as a whole.

In order to achieve that, I consider that a comprehensive calendar of activities updated every month and carried in people’s pockets - in the format I previously showed you - would support that aim and, as I would have to do it anyway, I am prepared to freely share the information I gather. If others can provide information for me to fill in the gaps, it wouldn't be too hard for me to maintain the simple format I devised so when this project ends, it can be continued on my own time if necessary. I intend - as don't see a good reason to not - to also include any news of new volunteering opportunities that I can afford the time to compile. However, it does seem to be perceived by you that a few lines a month on the foot of a document could threaten the role of XYZ and I now have to expend a great deal of resources and will be delayed by obtaining your permission to do what should be offered by your organisation without question.

I do sympathise with your position. For example I am advising several local schemes who would like to recruit more volunteers and I have secured grant funding for them to do so but I am well aware that a successful campaign will recruit people who - not aware of the differences - may contact other schemes outside my remit and offer to become a volunteers with them. I have no intention to prevent that as their ambition is hopefully shared by those I am working for; that people's needs are met. But it is an unfortunate aspect of the culture in local government and Third Sector funding that we will be judged solely on the hard numbers of volunteers we can recruit and not the many soft outcomes our effort will undoubtedly have. We have no plans so far to structure the campaign so that we lock-in potential volunteers solely to our schemes, as that mind-set would limit our options considerably and enforcement of it would expend resources. It might also set our purpose in opposition to others, who could see our efforts as being in competition with them for the very limited resource of capable local volunteers. You can understand how easy that is. It is a great pity how organisations, because of the scarcity of resources, can fall into thinking they are in competition instead of cooperation with others, just as you acknowledged.

In an ideal world, XYZ would automatically forward to me and anyone else who asked the information you receive of local volunteering opportunity, in the way I previously described to you. It makes sense for me to look to XYZ to do that rather than have me subscribe to every local voluntary organisation - reinventing the wheel - as you are the ideal aggregator and portal and you are being funded to do this. Then I can direct any interest back to you, where you can screen and direct the volunteers as appropriate. I would like to list specifically the one-off opportunities, such as a recruitment evening, rather than listing the constant regular needs (a library can always use another volunteer) but I cannot start to model or map the current volunteer demand without access to the resources you are established to provide. It is always my intention that those seeking more information will be referred to the source, which can be you if you insist, but it makes no sense to squander a potential volunteer's precious time and fragile enthusiasm on needless rigmarole.

Your initial response to my request was to suggest that anyone interested in volunteering should just blindly contact you directly but it is common sense that without any kind of information to inspire or instigate their actions, people are unlikely to turn up asking "how can I help?", though some do. XYZ is not the first volunteer bureaux I have encountered to have this very narrow perspective of the potential volunteer and so limit their chances of successful recruitment but I remain hopeful you will, like others, be persuaded on the folly of that position.

You also missed the point I made several times that the list I will circulate is not for the end-user - the volunteer themselves - but for the intermediary who might be in a position to influence people to participate in the community. It will not suffice for them to say "just go to XYZ..." but if the intermediary could mention specific opportunities; that will have greater influence than directing people to merely drop-in. My purpose must be, as best as I can, to enable the marketing of services according to the situation of the people they are meant for, instead of unreasonably expecting those people to conform to the needs of the organisation.

I urge you to reconsider your decision and consider how my effort will serve you in us all better serving the public who employ us.

Kind regards,

Nat Bocking