The Rural Community Council For Kent and Medway
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Kent and Medway Rural Access to Services Programme
Rural Access to Services Programme (RASP) is funded by SEEDA and managed by KCC and its county-wide partners. The programme aims to improve access to services throughout rural Kent and Medway by focussing on two specific areas: community shops and community transport.
Download the Community Transport Sustainability Grant Application Information and Application Form below. You may choose either PDF or Word format.
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Community shops
- Community shops can play an important role at increasing access to essential grocery provision in rural areas, when commercial provision is no longer viable or possible. A community shop is ‘one where there is community involvement in setting up and/or running the shop’.
- RASP aims to develop a cluster of community-owned shops in Kent to solve issues arising from the unavoidable closure of commercially-run grocery shops and post offices in rural areas. Two posts have been created, a community development worker and a specialist rural advisor. Their objectives are to provide dedicated support to communities wishing to set up a community shop, expert advice on all aspects of the retailing operation and of setting up a social/community enterprise (not for profit organisation). The added benefit of grant aid being available to financially assist community groups completes the offering from the project. A greater number of community shops in villages without grocery stores will undoubtedly mean local people could walk to their shop for basic provisions, reducing the need to travel to larger towns, resulting in a more cohesive community, greener outlook and healthier lifestyle.
- This project complements the work being undertaken by Virsa at a national level and by Kent Action for Rural Retailers (KARR) at a local level.
- A new leaflet giving brief details of how to go about setting up a Community Shop, together with a more detailed "Community Shop Toolkit" are available for downloading from our "Community Shops" page.
Community transport
- Community transport schemes can play an important and invaluable role at increasing access with rural areas – especially for the 13% of rural households that do not have private transport who otherwise could be socially isolated. To date nearly 100 rural community transport schemes have been established across Kent and Medway.
- Community transport is ‘a service which provides access by the most appropriate means to key services and facilitates for all who are unable to reach them by commercial bus, rail and ferry services or by private car’. Typically in Kent this can mean schemes ranging from a private car through to a fleet of minibuses.
- This programme is seeking to strengthen rural community transport provision across Kent and Medway. In order to add value to investment that has already occurred in this sector, there is a particular focus on identifying ways that existing, successful community transport operations can move towards greater sustainability. A Community Transport Facilitator has been appointed to liaise with transport providers, help review their marketing and business plans and assist them in preparing for available grant aid.
- Project aims are to:
- ensure greater and wider knowledge of the existence of community transport schemes that operate by launching a promotion and awareness campaign
- amend and improve outlook and provision in order to help a number of schemes to move towards greater operation sustainability
- help schemes apply for the RASP sustainability grant fund
- Create and launch an operational brokerage pilot in a specified and focused to review the effectiveness and sustainability of pooling available community transport provision
- RASP has limited funding for the 3-year programme, but with the targeted work described, the outcomes from both working with community shop and community transport schemes it is hoped the programme will have a visible and long lasting effect.
