18 Dec Ourbus Torbay ceases operations due to lack of funds

It is a sad fact of life in the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise sector (VCSE) that projects come and go.

Most are because they have run their course and have successfully completed their aims, but that is not always the case and sometimes it simply comes down to money.

Funds come from many sources, but nearly all have one thing in common: they are restricted, or, to put it another way, they can only be spent on very specific objectives and cannot be diverted elsewhere, no matter how desirable that might be.

Rarely do VCSE organisations have the freedom to spend money as they wish, and pots of unrestricted funds are very hard to come by. The funders keep a tight hold on the purse strings. Understandable.

But there are times when we at Torbay Communities identify a need that cannot be met because there is no pot of money available to fund it, which can be very frustrating.

A few years ago, we launched OurBus because having worked in the Bay with vulnerable and lonely people, we realised that bringing people together, thereby ensuring they did not become isolated, greatly benefited mental and physical health.

We had already been running day trips and had seen how important it was to get people, particularly those with limited mobility, out and about, sometimes for leisure, sometimes for essentials such as medical appointments and even shopping.

When we recognised that the people of Livermead were in danger of losing their bus service, leaving them marooned at the top of a steep hill without access to the town centres of Paignton or Torquay because they could not afford the taxi fares and did not have access to their own transport, we launched a scheduled bus service.

The response was fantastic and the buses, staffed by volunteer drivers, were dubbed mobile community centres. But no matter how important the services were to the passengers, there were pitfalls, the cost of running them being, by far, the biggest.

We struggled to find a way to keep the service running at an affordable cost, so we launched what we believed was the only subscription service in the country. However, the costs still outstripped the income until Torbay Council recognised their importance and subsidised them with grants.

As a result, we were able to launch another service along the same lines, this time serving other bus-less areas. It ran between The Willows and Market Street in Torquay via Hele, St Marychurch, Babbacombe, and Plainmoor.

The buses themselves were prohibitively expensive to run. You would be surprised how many clutches heavy vehicles like that get through on the hilly terrain around the Bay and then there are the very necessary regular safety checks. For a charity, unable to afford new vehicles, it simply was not sustainable.

Sadly, when the routes came up for tender this year we had to take the very difficult decision to withdraw. Some might consider that to be a failure on our part, but it wasn’t because we had proved a point and commercial operators are once again running those services meaning that the communities are still supported.

That wasn’t the end of OurBus because we reverted to our original plan to get people out and about on day trips – once again bringing people together for fun and for necessities such as the weekly trip to the out-of-town supermarkets when Lidl pulled out of Paignton town centre.

But we couldn’t charge the fares necessary to cover the costs, not even with volunteer drivers and we unsuccessfully sought funding to keep them going.

Sadly, as of 6th December, we have had to mothball OurBus, despite realising that community bus services meet a very real need in our communities, but without funding they are simply not sustainable.

We are now working on a new model, borrowing underused mini buses from other organisations to bring people together and continue to get them out and about.

Hopefully, we can pull a rabbit out of a hat and find someone with deep pockets who recognises the need and is prepared to fund these vital services, but until that day, OurBus has reached the terminus.