Celebrate our Grand Opening of our Jessops Way Depot on the 12th October 2010 at 11am.

Norman Baker, MP for Lewes, as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport will be cutting the ribbon at 11am.

This event will be attended by the Mayors of Croydon and Sutton, Local MP’s Tom Brake and Paul Burstow, Council Officers, local users of our services, volunteers, and staff.

The Sutton Community Transport Group was formed in 1997. We currently operate 29 vehicles (26 minibuses) one bus in a brokerage scheme, one accessible car and a van.

Sutton Community Transport has 2 components, Sutton Community Transport (SCT) and Sutton Jigsaw Transport (SJT).

In the year to August 2010 we completed over 47,000 passenger trips for 125 voluntary groups in Sutton Borough. We receive no grants from Sutton Borough. This independence is something to celebrate as it means we have become self funding and have retained very good working arrangements with the Council and the voluntary sector. The borough’s policies have helped us reach this position over a long period of time.

Breakdown of voluntary groups using our services.

special needs 30 24%.

elderly 43 34%.

youth 28 22%.

other 24 19%.

Sutton Jigsaw Transport (SJT) In 2009 we formed a trading subsidiary Sutton Jigsaw Transport Ltd which was successful in bidding for eleven home to school transport contracts in the London Borough of Croydon. We transport on each and every school day over 150 pupils with high mobility needs. The capital funding for this rapid expansion was provided by Futurebuilders (now the Social Investment Business). The reason for forming this subsidiary was, and remains, to make our operations in Sutton sustainable. We are in the business of combating social exclusion.

In 2010 we were awarded the Social Enterprise Mark.

Sutton Community Transport Group We have both paid and volunteer drivers. Our volunteers do not ever drive contract work for councils, schools or voluntary groups. They do drive outings, especially for older people to go to the coast, garden centres and other places of interest. This is very effective in reducing loneliness and social isolation The purpose of the event and why this is important to Sutton CT.

The purpose of the event and its importance to us because we were able to move to new premises as a result of successfully tendering for the home to school work in Croydon. We have not been very good at self publicity and this event is a chance to celebrate our achievements in the last couple of years.

Notable achievements of the organisation Apart from successfully bidding for contracts in Croydon we have recently: • Run six buses for Whitgift Snap during the summer school holidays. This was three weeks of activities for SEN youngsters and an example of partnership working with another charity.

• Run a replacement shuttle service to replace part of a London bus route that was diverted due to bridge works. This was set up at 48 hours notice.

• Organised a very successful conference for the voluntary sector in Sutton to address the changes to transport resulting from the government’s Personalisation Agenda in social care.

• Expanded our training activities for local groups (MiDAS and PATS for drivers and passenger assistants).