Who's behind it?

How did it it start?

Where does it go from here?

Answers below :-

What do you do when the community you live in starts to lose vital services?

Work out how to take them on and run them yourself that's what!

The start of a community service idea

As part of a central government rural bus challenge, Oxford county council a set-up and ran a commuter service from Watlington and Chinor to Lewknor to link with the Oxford Tube.

With only ever 1 years funding the service was under almost constant threat of closure.

Following multiple changes to its service, reach and timing and numerous false alarms the final decision in 2007 by the council not to re-award the tender to a commercial supplier was hardly a surprise.

No surprise and also not a situation that had been left to happen without some people planning to do something about it.

Two local councillors Angie Paterson and David Shannon, and Keith Halstead, Chairman of the national Community Transport Association and fortuitously living in Watlington, had been working on a proposal to the county to run the service as a community transport initiative.

Their idea was to create an organisation that could harness the community's energy and strengths to successfully run initiatives that will directly benefit the local community. The connections bus replacement being conceived only as the first of many such initiatives.

Set up of Watlington CIC

In order to ensure the venture really would be for the benefit of Watlington and to give the widest possible scope of operations the CIC company structure was chosen. This allows for a commercial operation but ensures any profit or benefits must be ploughed back into the community it is set-up to serve.

Although not the most original name 'Watlington Community Interest Company' is what we have decided to call ourselves. We are open for business and ready to go.

After wading through reams and reams of red tape we now have all the approvals and agreements in place that we need to start operating our first service; the connections bus to Lewknor.

Now we have to build on this and see what the future holds