The impact of CT

Social & economic exclusion

National and local policies identify five key components of daily life, to which we all need access as a basis for a healthy and fulfilling life:

People who are young, able bodied or with access to a car often take getting to or from work, school or college, the Doctor, the shops or to meet friends for granted.

Inability to do so, due to lack of access to transport, results in groups or individuals becoming marginalised and socially excluded.

In plain language,

The above are the components of social and economic exclusion.

CT helps combat social and economic exclusion by providing access to the five key components.

Social impact

Individual transport services are having a considerable impact on access to three key areas of activity – Employment (36% of individual trips), Education (32% of individual trips) and Healthcare (20% of individual trips).

Group transport is having a considerable impact on access to two key areas of activity: Social & Cultural (54% of group trips) and Education (34% of group trips).

It is clear that, despite the national trend of decreasing volunteering, volunteer input accounts for a considerable proportion (nearly 80%) of the driver resources available to the Greater Manchester CT sector.

In addition to the economic contribution that volunteering makes to society, volunteering also makes a valuable social contribution. On an individual basis, it can also help to improve self-esteem and social skills and provide a route into, or a means of return to, employment.

Economic impact

With a turnover of £3.8 million, and the provision of over 140 jobs, the GM CT sector clearly has a considerable economic impact.

In addition:

If volunteer hours were to be costed at the same rate as a casually-employed driver - £6.50 per hour – this represents a contribution by volunteering of nearly £190,000.

During 2007-2008, the GM CT sector contributed significantly to workforce skills, within a sector where there are acknowledged skills shortages. CT operators trained over five hundred drivers (both volunteers and paid employees) to nationally-recognised MiDAS standards.

Environmental impact

The CT sector made over half a million individual passenger journeys during 2007-2008. There are no indicators available to determine how many of these journeys would have been made by car, had CT not been available.

Indeed, it might be argued that some research to estimate this would be considered useful.

Assuming a 75% loading factor (eight passengers, which may be conservative) for CT vehicles, compared with a 100% loading factor (four passengers, which may be optimistic) for a car, some rough calculations, in relation to group transport at least, can be made.

Every journey (comprising eight individual trips) in a CT vehicle could therefore result in a saving of at least one car journey. Using the indicative figures for 2007-2008 (252,398 group trips), it can be seen that CT could have saved over thirty one thousand car journeys.