Connect and Learn: Engaging with your Community

Advice / Support

, United Kingdom

Meaningful community engagement can help community transport organisations understand what people really need, identify gaps in existing services and make informed decisions about the future.

At our latest Connect & Learn session, we explored different approaches to community engagement, with insights from CTA’s own research and a practical example from Island of Hoy Development Trust in Orkney.

Listening to communities

Charlotte Morley, Research and Policy Officer at CTA, shared learning from CTA’s Creating Connections research project, funded by the Motability Foundation.

The project is exploring how community transport can better support disabled children and young people to get to the places they need and want to go. CTA is working with transport operators, disabled people’s organisations, disabled children and young people, families and wider stakeholders to understand transport barriers and identify practical solutions.

The project has highlighted several important lessons about engagement.

Trusted relationships matter. Working with organisations that already have relationships within a community can help reach people who might otherwise be difficult to engage and bring valuable local knowledge and understanding.

Different approaches reach different people. Surveys can help identify trends across a large number of responses, while focus groups and conversations allow people to share their experiences in much greater depth. Using a combination of approaches can provide a much richer picture.

Accessibility needs to be considered from the start. Good engagement is about more than inviting people to participate. Information, questions and activities need to be designed so that people can take part in ways that work for them.

And importantly, people want to know that their views matter. Being clear about why you're asking for people's views and how those views will be used can help build trust and encourage meaningful participation.

A community-led approach on the Island of Hoy

Nici and Chris from Island of Hoy Development Trust then shared how community engagement helped them rethink their transport service on the remote Orkney island, which has fewer than 400 residents.

The Development Trust had operated a scheduled community bus service for more than 12 years, but the service was no longer meeting the needs of the whole community. Less than half of residents lived directly on the main road, while passenger numbers were low.

Rather than deciding what changes were needed themselves, the Development Trust asked the community.

They carried out a passenger survey, spoke to local businesses and groups, and sent a consultation to every household on the island. Of the 222 households contacted, 157 responded.

The consultation asked residents about routes, timetables, accessibility, payment and booking options, barriers to travel, and where they wanted to go. The feedback was clear. Residents valued the existing service but wanted more flexible transport, including Saturday services, door-to-door journeys, better accessibility and improved access to shops, medical facilities, community centres, schools and other destinations.

The consultation also highlighted feelings of isolation and exclusion among people who could not reach existing bus stops or physically access the vehicles.

Turning feedback into action

The community feedback became an important part of the Development Trust’s case for change, supporting a successful funding application for just over £130,000 for three new small electric vehicles and charging infrastructure.

Some key details are:

The new service launched the following April, combining demand-responsive transport with a smaller scheduled service.
The new vehicles were small enough to reach homes and roads that larger buses could not, making door-to-door journeys possible for people who had previously struggled to access the service.
The Development Trust also engaged with residents again when the new service launched, providing information about how to use, book and pay for it.

Results have been significant with passenger journeys increasing by 80%, and residents are now making journeys that were not possible under the previous service - including trips to shops, medical appointments, community activities, education, work and to see friends.

The organisation also used further engagement to test ideas before the full service was launched. When residents in the north of the island requested a weekly shopping trip, the team met with them to understand what they needed. The resulting trial also enabled people to attend a community meal, see friends and access medical appointments.

The importance of ongoing engagement

The session demonstrated that community engagement is not a one-off exercise. It is about building relationships, using different methods, listening to people who may not currently use your services and being willing to adapt based on what you hear.

For Island of Hoy Development Trust, listening to the community helped transform a service that was reaching a relatively small proportion of residents into one that is enabling a much wider range of journeys.

For CTA’s Creating Connections research, working alongside trusted partners and listening directly to disabled children, young people and their families is helping to build a better understanding of the barriers people face.

Find out more

CTA’s Creating Connections research project will continue through to March 2027, with the next stage involving analysis of the evidence gathered, stakeholder roundtables and the development of practical resources and recommendations.

Thank you to everyone who joined our Connect & Learn session.