USERS of the Holsworthy volunteer car scheme will be asked to pay a £2 booking fee for every car journey from December 1.

This is because the Big Lottery funding Holsworthy Rural Community Transport receives ran out in April.

Esther Rowe, the assistant transport coordinator, said: “The annual cost to HRCT of running the volunteer car scheme is approximately £4,000 per annum but we get less than £1,000 of funding for it. This means that the Ring and Ride Big Lottery funding has been subsidising it for the past five years.

“As one of the only volunteer car schemes not charging a booking fee it seems an obvious choice that we need to start doing this.”

The fee will be payable to the car driver at the end of each journey.