Environment and roads

Herts Travellink - What people are saying

Sue Wilcox, the General Manager of the local non-emergency ambulance service, has no doubts about the value of Herts Travellink.

She explains: 'Non-emergency ambulance staff are specially trained to deliver personal care and basic first aid, and can also help passengers with physical problems to negotiate obstacles such as staircases, gates and bumpy pathways. Herts Travellink will ensure that people travelling with these staff can benefit from the skill and care they are trained to deliver, rather than simply needing a lift to their destinations.

The ambulance service wants to be able to focus on people with medical conditions that prevent them from using any other form of transport, and to offer a more responsive service for people who need dedicated personal care.'

The ambulance service makes over 6000 trips per week for Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire residents who have a medical need for specialist but non-emergency transport to health services.


David Neilan is the Hertfordshire Community Transport Officer, responsible for the door-to-door Dial a Ride transport service which provides some 60,000 journeys per year, for elderly and disabled residents.

He says: 'Herts Travellink will ensure residents get both high quality information and transport, allowing them to find out about transport with the minimum of fuss - by phone, email or through their health and social service carers. The scheme will also enable transport providers to organise appropriate transport based on residents' actual needs.

There is already a degree of co-ordination between the health, environment and voluntary sectors – but Herts Travellink will take us to the next stage of partnership working. It will enable a range of transport operators to combine their resources and be responsive to the needs of residents in the most efficient way.

We deal with a spectrum of transport services, from the large to the small. Herts Travellink will enable users to book transport with the certainty that they’ll get a service appropriate to their specific needs, and with no hassle.'

Maureen Morgans (Now Maureen Harwood), Transport Manager with County Transport Services, says: 'Having one point, where trained operators can give guidance or advice, and book people into the most appropriate transport service would be a great benefit to the general public and professionals alike.

True integration could mean services coming together to meet people needs and monitor where there are gaps instead of the existing fragmented expensive additional services.'

The County Council's County Transport Service runs 167 vehicles, providing transport for 65 day centres and family support centres throughout Hertfordshire. Over 6000 clients use the service each week. Clients include the frail, elderly, elderly people with dementia, physical disabilities, learning difficulties, mental illness and families in need of support.

County Transport Services also manage 'contracted' transport for clients with learning difficulties across the county, as well as answering requests for people who need to travel individually due to behaviour problems or to more remote locations around the county.

Roger D’Elia runs the West Herts Transport Service within the county's mental health and learning disabilities organisation. He believes that Herts Travellink offers the hope of a more responsive and high-quality service for the end user by meeting their needs more efficiently.

He says: 'Moving over to a more coordinated system provides potential for organisations to work together on issues such as bookings and data collection. It also offers us the opportunity to reduce the impact of transport on our environment and manage increasing costs. It's an opportunity to ensure that transport is inclusive and considered within all forms of care packages'

He adds: 'Currently, there are variable levels of service provision, both in terms of quantity and quality, along with inequality of access and poor communications between agencies. If we are to make the most of limited resources – and improve the end service to users – we need to move urgently to a more integrated system.'