Providing Community Transport Services To The Downland Villages Of West Berkshire
Volunteering with Downland Volunteer Group
To find out more information about volunteering Contact us here or leave a message.
Overview
We are always looking for new volunteers. If you are interested in helping, we would love to hear from you. There are three roles, private car driving, driving the Handybus, or helping with the office administration. It does not matter if you can only commit to a few hours a month, any time you could give in any area would be helpful and greatly appreciated.
Private Car Driving
Volunteers use their own car to transport passengers to and from appointments. It can be local doctors’ surgery appointments, hospital appointments or other reasons like dentist or optician appointments.
Each volunteer can decide what range of travel they are willing to undertake, You can just do local trips or travel further afield to hospital appointments in Newbury, Reading, Oxford and Basingstoke.
Volunteer drivers are paid the Government statutory mileage allowance for each trip they complete to cover the running costs of their car.
HandeBus Driving
The group owns a 12-seater electric minibus that is used primarily to take passengers on shopping trips to local town centres and supermarkets. It is also available for community groups to hire for special trips.
As a HandyeBus driver you would pick passengers up from their homes for the trips and drive them back. You would also be asked to help with carrying their shopping off of the bus to their doorsteps.
Training is available for new drivers who can also shadow existing drivers to get a feel for the routes and see what is involved. You will also be asked to take a test which gives a certificate of competence to show that you have achieved the required standard to drive the bus.
Office Administration
Office administrators are required to support the private car transport bookings. The office is in the doctors’ surgery in Compton. The office is open 9:30am to 11:30am every weekday for passengers to phone in with their transport requests.
Administrators take the telephone bookings, log the call details onto the booking system on the computer and try to find a driver to fill the booking before phoning the passenger back with their booking confirmation.