Accessible Transport « Compaid | Removing barriers

Accessible transport

For many disabled and older people across Kent, a lack of transport services that are both accessible and affordable leads to their exclusion from local amenities and community life generally.

Disabled people remain significantly less likely to participate in cultural, leisure and sporting activities than non-disabled people. In time this causes them to lose confidence which, in turn, results in a loss of independence and wellbeing. Often the end results are poverty and ill health.

Commercial transport operators have long since abandoned those routes that are unprofitable. As a result, public transport is not accessible to many of the 40,000 disabled people within Kent and its surrounds, who live in isolated, rural areas, and specially adapted private transport is beyond the financial means of most.

We are the leading provider of accessible transport for disabled people in Kent, making over 30,000 journeys a year. Our transport services take hundreds of disabled and frail elderly people on essential journeys each week, including to hospital and health appointments, visits to community centres and social gatherings, or simply a trip to the local supermarket or to see family and friends.

Many local residential homes have withdrawn their own minibuses from use due to high maintenance and management costs, and other local charities – such as Kent Association for the Blind, Age UK and Leonard Cheshire Disability - increasingly rely on our Transport Service to take clients to and from their own services.

Compaid’s fleet of wheelchair accessible minibuses and smaller adapted vehicles is driven by a team of trained and experienced drivers, covering a wide area across Kent and East Sussex, with more distant destinations available on request. Our door to door services can cater from individuals attending medical appointments, to large group outings to the Kent coast or local National Trust properties.