Cellan and Llanfair Village Community Transport

Hi, I'm Martyn and I am one of the volunteer drivers for the community transport bus for the rural villages of Llanfair Clydogau and Cellan.

We started operating a pilot scheme to provide transport to rural communities because at the beginning of 2023, the regular Saturday bus that serves the villages was cancelled, leaving village residents with no public transport to their nearest town, Lampeter. This has affected many people who relied on the service for shopping, to catch link buses to larger towns such as Carmarthen and Aberystwyth, to visit family and friends and for some, to attend Saturday jobs in the town of Lampeter.

Following a very successful open day, in which questionnaires were distributed, allowed the team to understand what residents wanted from a community bus. An initial small pot of funding was kindly provided by our local Community Council and Cellan Village Improvement Society, to support an initial proof of concept service. Our local newspaper, the Cambrian News, ran a story of the plight of our communities, and this also helped to raise the profile and awareness of the cuts to services specifically across rural Mid and West Wales, and what local residents were doing themselves to maintain such a vital service.

The initial pilot service has been operating four services each Saturday for around one month, and this has been well supported, with local residents able to take advantage of Christmas late night shopping, local Lampeter Saturday Market, allow people to pick up prescriptions and to allow isolated elderly residents the opportunity to socialise with friends and family, and younger residents to get to work - all this helping to support local businesses.

Out next phase is to extend the pilot through January 2024 until June 2024 inclusive. This will allow us to properly review the service through capturing further statistics of passenger numbers through different seasons from Winter, Spring and early Summer, and capture further valuable feedback from passengers and to possibly, if successful, use this pilot as a model for other communities who are experiencing cuts to their services.

We are extremely grateful to the Save the 585 Bus Committee, residents, councillors, volunteers and Dolen Teifi who have kindly provide the minibus for us to operate on a pence per mile basis around the circular route which allow drop offs and pickups across the villages.

To allow us to continue to run the vital and clearly needed Community Transport from January until June, we estimate that this will require funds of £500. If we raise more funds, then we will be able to complete the pilot scheme, and look to expand the service. If you are able to contribute even a small amount of money to this extremely important service, we would be very, very grateful. Diolch yn fawr!