About Community Ride Hub

Community Ride Hub was founded on a straightforward observation. For older people, disabled people, families without a car, and people living in places the bus network barely reaches, everyday journeys — to a hospital appointment, a day centre, a school, or simply to see other people — are often unreliable, unaffordable or physically impossible. Left unaddressed, that isolation affects health, independence and wellbeing.

Community Ride Hub exists to make transport genuinely accessible for the people who need it most, and to use modern tools well so that the service is safer, more efficient and more dependable than it would otherwise be — never as a substitute for good judgement or care.

Community Ride Hub is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee, being built to operate under a section 19 community transport permit. That means we are set up to carry members and people referred by partner organisations, not the general public, and any surplus we generate is put back into the service rather than distributed. We are preparing our vehicles, our people and our systems before we open any service to the public.

The proposed model is pre-booked and, where journeys fit together sensibly, shared — closer to community minibus schemes than to a taxi. A member or a partner organisation would request a journey in advance, and Community Ride Hub would plan routes around the requests it receives, rather than responding to journeys on demand.

As a not-for-profit, every journey Community Ride Hub provides is intended to recover its cost rather than generate a return for owners or shareholders. Any surplus is reinvested in vehicles, training and the service itself. We see community benefit in the journeys we help people make and in the local employment, training and volunteering opportunities the organisation is intended to create.

We are building Community Ride Hub by talking to the people and organisations who understand the gap best: prospective members, carers, referral partners, drivers and local groups. Registering a transport need, referring someone, or getting in touch to discuss a partnership all feed directly into how the service is designed.

We expect much of Community Ride Hub's work to happen through partner organisations — schools, day centres, health and social care providers, and community groups — rather than through individual bookings. If you represent an organisation, our organisations page sets out how to start that conversation.

We intend to measure things that matter to members and funders: journeys arranged, people supported, reliability, and satisfaction. We have no operational figures yet, so we publish none — see our impact page for what we plan to measure once the service is running.

Community Ride Hub wants to help create a future where transport is never a barrier to belonging, independence or opportunity — communities where people can stay connected and reach what matters to them, regardless of age, disability, mobility, income or access to conventional public transport. Read the full picture on mission, vision and values.