A COMMMUNITY bus service which provides a ‘vital lifeline’ to some of the most vulnerable people in Dartmouth and surrounding villages is under threat.

The Totnes and Dartmouth Ring and Ride service is faced with calling it a day after running into a cash crisis.

Alison Stocks, manager and co-ordinator of Dartmouth Caring, said to lose the service would be a blow to several people, especially those living the outlying districts.

‘It’s vital service,’ she said. ‘The bus is usually full and provides a social lifeline to many who find it difficult to get out of their homes and are not able to use other forms of public transport.

‘For many, it’s an opportunity to get out and not feel so isolated. I really hope it can hang on.’

The bus service was told last year it was one of 300 groups nationally to share in a £25m pot of Government cash which would provide it with a brand new, specially adapted bus.

But the service is so short of cash it is likely to run out money and collapse before it can even order the new bus, said ring and ride chairman Judy Westacott.

The service needs a minimum of £10,000 to see it through to the next financial year when it is hoped to access grant funding for a restructured operation.

The service, aimed at the elderly, frail and disabled, has made more than 60 applications to various bodies for grant aid over the last six months in a desperate bid to stay afloat.

It is now close to running out of money unless someone comes forward to save the service, warned Miss Westacott.

The ring and ride service has got less than four weeks to order the new Government bus – but organisers have got to decide whether it is even worth doing that if there is no service left for it to be part of.

Miss Westacott said a letter has gone out to all the people who use the service, warning them of its possible closure.

‘We need help to keep going until the end of the financial year,’ said Miss Westacott. ‘Our service provides bus transport for people who cannot use any other form of transport.

‘If we have to close they will be shut in their homes. The thought of all our passengers who have been with us for some time being stuck at home and not being able to get out and meet people. It’s more than just a service that we run.

‘There is now very little money in the pot and we need money now.’

The ring and ride service, launched 22 years ago, runs on a budget of around £100,000 a year, operating a doorstep service using specially adapted buses.

Despite grant aid from the county council and other local authorities, the ring and ride service still has to cover an annual shortfall of around £20,000 through fundraising efforts.

The bus service currently makes around 3,500 passenger journeys a year, operating five or six days a week, using its own 15-seater bus plus a second 15-seater bus and a smaller seven-seater bus – both owned by and leased from the county council.

In 2014, the service overcame one crisis when the Devon County Council withdrew one of the buses used for the service and organisers had to find £9,000 to buy a second hand bus of their own to keep the operation going.

If it can survive, the ring and ride service is planning to save costs by handing back the 15 seater county council bus and run the operation with just two buses.

In March last year, the Government announced that both the ring and ride would be getting a brand new bus as part of the Department for Trans­port’s £25m Community Transport Minibus Fund.

Now the ring and ride operation are hoping that the service will survive long enough to be able to claim the new bus.