What the new Local Transport Plan guidance means for community transport in England
By Caroline Whitney, Director for England
On 2 April 2026, the Department for Transport published its new statutory guidance on Local Transport Plans (LTPs). It applies to local transport authorities in England outside London, and sets out how they should put together the plans that will shape transport in their area for the next 10 to 20 years.
This is important for Community Transport. LTPs are the single biggest document that decides what local transport looks like in your area, who gets prioritised, and where the money goes. For the first time, the guidance also tells local transport authorities, in plain terms, that they must engage with community transport operators when they write their plan. That is a real step forward, and it is worth understanding why.
Read below for a breakdown of what the guidance says, what it means, and what you can do with it:
The headline: local authorities now must engage with community transport
This is the big one. The guidance is explicit. When local transport authorities are putting together their LTP, they must engage with community transport operators in their area. It is not a suggestion. It is set out as a clear expectation, alongside a requirement to engage with the Community Transport Association as the body that represents the sector.
The guidance goes further than that. It describes community transport as playing a critical role in keeping people independent and connected to their communities, to employment, to education, and to essential services such as healthcare. It recognises that for many older people, disabled people, and people in rural areas, community transport is a lifeline without which they would simply not travel.
And it acknowledges something that we have been saying for a long time. Community transport typically does not always have a voice within local transport authorities. The guidance therefore expects authorities to think holistically and to make sure community transport operators are involved in local transport decision making and planning, and that their services are integrated into the wider network.
What to do: if you have not already been invited to contribute to your local authority's LTP, get in touch with them. Point them to this guidance. Ask them how they are meeting the expectation to engage with community transport.
If you aren’t sure contact us at england@ctauk.org. We try to keep up to date with LTP plans and can support your area to submit a response and be involved.
LTPs are vision-led, and that suits us
The guidance asks local transport authorities to move away from the old “predict and provide” model of transport planning, where you forecast vehicle numbers and then build capacity to match. Instead, authorities should start by asking what outcomes they want to achieve, and then work out how transport can deliver them.
This is a much better fit for community transport than the old model ever was. Our work is rooted in what people actually need, not in traffic forecasts. If your local authority is genuinely working in a vision-led way, you should be at the table early, when the outcomes are being set, and not just at the formal consultation stage when most of the plan is already written.
What to do: ask to be involved at the visioning stage. The earlier you can get into the conversation, the more chance you have of seeing community transport reflected in the priorities the plan is built around.
Accessibility is a central theme, and that gives us a real opening
The guidance has a strong chapter on making travel accessible and inclusive. It reminds local transport authorities of their duties under the Equality Act 2010, the Public Sector Equality Duty, the Care Act 2014, and section 112 of the Transport Act 2000, which specifically requires authorities to consider the transport needs of disabled people, older people and people with mobility problems when developing LTP policies.
Authorities are expected to:
- appoint a senior leader and a councillor or board member to champion accessibility
- include an accessibility chapter in the LTP
- produce an equality impact assessment
- adopt the social model of disability
- describe how disabled, older and mobility-impaired people are engaged in developing services and policies
Community transport is central to delivering on all of this. We carry the people the duties are written for. We have years of practical experience of what accessible service really looks like, and we have direct relationships with users who are often missed by standard consultation processes.
What to do: offer to help your local authority hear directly from the people they need to hear from. That is a service you can give them, and it makes the case for community transport much stronger than any briefing paper.
Demand responsive transport gets its own section, and it matters
The guidance encourages authorities to consider demand responsive transport (DRT) as part of the suite of options available to them. It defines DRT as a flexible, shared service responding to user requests for pick-up and drop-off, typically using smaller vehicles.
Crucially, it says that DRT may offer a more accessible service to older and disabled people than other forms of bus service, and that authorities should consider vehicle and booking system accessibility and disability awareness training for drivers.
Many of you have been delivering services that look very like DRT for years, often decades. The new wave of branded DRT pilots that local authorities have run, with mixed results, has sometimes overlooked the operators who already know how to do this. The guidance creates an opening for that to be put right.
What to do: if your local authority is exploring or running DRT, ask how community transport is being involved. If they are starting from scratch, offer to share what you know about what works and what does not.
Bus Service Improvement Plans, franchising and Bus Network Accessibility Plans
Every local transport authority must continue to maintain a Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) and must either be operating an enhanced partnership or be in the process of introducing a bus franchising scheme. There is also a new duty for every authority to produce a Bus Network Accessibility Plan, with the first one due to be published by 31 March 2027.
The guidance says that when developing the LTP, authorities should take into account the range of bus service providers in their area. The list includes community transport operators alongside commercial operators, tendered services and potential new entrants. That means community transport should be visible in the bus chapter of the LTP, not just in a community transport section at the back.
What to do: check whether your local authority's BSIP and Bus Network Accessibility Plan mention community transport at all. If they do not, that is a gap worth raising now, well ahead of the March 2027 deadline.
Socially necessary services
The Bus Services Act 2025, which the guidance refers to, requires authorities in enhanced partnership areas to identify and publish a list of socially necessary local services, and to follow a more robust process before any of those services can be changed or cancelled. Authorities running franchising schemes are expected to follow a similar process.
Many of the services community transport provides will meet the definition of social necessity. The question is whether they will be on the list. We should be involved in shaping how those lists are put together in our areas.
What to do: if your local authority is drawing up a list of socially necessary services, make sure community transport services are considered.
School and SEND transport
The guidance asks local transport authorities to plan transport in a way that supports and complements travel assistance to schools and colleges, including for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). It says better alignment can reduce pressure on local authority budgets and make better use of vehicles and capacity.
Community transport providers are significant deliverers of home-to-school and SEND transport, and this is a clear opening for us to be part of joint planning conversations rather than treated as a separate contract on the side.
What to do: if you provide school or SEND transport, ask whether transport and education colleagues are talking to each other when the LTP is being developed.
What about decarbonisation?
The guidance is clear that authorities must produce an electric vehicle infrastructure strategy as part of their LTP and should set out a pathway to decarbonise their local bus fleet.
This is a difficult area for community transport. Accessible minibuses are expensive, and the second-hand market that many smaller operators rely on does not yet exist at scale for zero emission vehicles. Charging infrastructure for smaller, dispersed fleets is also a challenge.
If decarbonisation strategies are written without input from the community transport sector, they risk being unworkable for us. That is a real problem, because community transport will not go away. We will just struggle to deliver against rules that were written for a different kind of operator.
What to do: if decarbonisation is being discussed in your area, ask to be part of it. Bring the specific challenges of our fleets and our funding into the conversation early.
What this does not change
A few honest words about the limits of the guidance.
It does not create new funding for community transport. The new local transport funding model gives authorities more flexibility, and it gives mayoral areas integrated settlements. Whether community transport is able to access any of that money will depend on local decisions, not on the guidance.
It does not give the sector a statutory seat at the table. The expectation that authorities engage with us is set out in guidance rather than law, and the language is “should” and “must engage” rather than “must include in decision making.”
What it does do is give us a clear, written, government-issued expectation that local transport authorities engage with community transport when they put their plans together. That is something we can hold them to.
What we are doing
The CTA is continuing to engage with the Department for Transport, with local transport authorities and with mayoral strategic authorities to make sure community transport is recognised in the new LTP framework. We will keep members updated as authorities start to publish or refresh their plans.
You can find the LTP guidance here. If you want to talk to us about how to engage with your local authority on their plan, please get in touch, either contact your Development Officer or email england@ctauk.org