Spare Seat

Rural communities across the UK face a shared challenge: not everyone can drive, public transport is often infrequent or absent, and the journeys that matter most — a hospital appointment, a weekly shop, a college run — don't always align with what is available.

At the same time, many drivers in the same community are making those same journeys with empty seats. Spare Seat connects them.

It is a community notice board for car sharing, built around civil parishes. Drivers post upcoming journeys and available seats; residents browse and request a lift. Contact details are exchanged only after the driver accepts a request. It is not a taxi service or a commercial platform — it is neighbours helping neighbours, with a small fuel-cost contribution where appropriate.

If your parish council is looking for a practical way to support residents with transport, we'd be happy to provide a short demonstration or discuss how Spare Seat could work in your community.

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Why this matters

For many residents — particularly older people, those without a driving licence, and those on lower incomes — the absence of reliable local transport is not an inconvenience. It is a significant barrier to independence, health, and social connection.

• Rural bus services have declined sharply in recent years
• Demand-responsive transport schemes are useful but limited in reach
• Taxis and ride-hailing services are expensive and not always available
• Social isolation in rural areas is a recognised and growing concern

Many parish councils recognise this — and are looking for affordable, practical ways to support their communities. Spare Seat gives councils a tool they can offer to residents without requiring significant resources or infrastructure.

It also addresses a quieter problem: every day, cars leave the same villages at the same time, going to the same places, each carrying a single occupant. Spare Seat makes it easy to fill those seats.

A simple, practical solution

Spare Seat provides parishes with a private, community-scoped carpooling platform — ready to use, with no setup complexity.

With Spare Seat, residents can:

• Post upcoming journeys with available seats
• Browse rides posted by other community members
• Request a seat and add a short message to the driver
• Receive a confirmation with a calendar invite when a request is accepted
• Set journey alerts to be notified when a matching ride is posted

Everything is kept within the community. Residents are not matched with strangers — they are matched with their neighbours.

Privacy by design

Contact details are never shown publicly. A driver's phone number is only visible to passengers whose request they have accepted. Residents can also block other users at the personal level — for example, if they prefer not to travel with a particular person — without any involvement from the council.

Rides are automatically removed 48 hours after the scheduled departure. No manual tidying is required.

A real-world example

An older resident needs to travel to the market town for a hospital appointment on a Thursday morning. The local bus runs only on Tuesdays and Fridays.

They check Spare Seat and see that a neighbour has posted a journey to town that morning with two seats available. They request a seat and add a short note about where they'd like to be collected.

The driver receives an email notification, accepts the request, and both parties receive a calendar invite for the journey. The driver's contact number is now visible to the passenger, allowing them to coordinate directly.

The appointment is kept. No taxi was needed. The driver's journey — which they were already making — is now shared.

The environmental case

Every shared seat means one fewer separate journey.

Spare Seat does not ask drivers to change their plans. It asks them to fill the seats in their car. When a passenger joins a journey that is already happening, the driver's fuel use is unchanged — but the passenger's alternative transport (a taxi, a lift from family, a second car making the same trip) is avoided entirely.

For a typical rural journey of 15 miles, that avoided trip saves roughly 4 kg of CO₂. Across a community sharing fifty journeys a year, that accumulates to around 200 kg — comparable to a return flight between London and Edinburgh — from activity the community was already carrying out, just with empty seats.

Councils can evidence this impact directly. The admin usage reports already track rides offered, seats shared, and estimated miles saved. For councils with a climate action plan or a net zero commitment, Spare Seat turns existing behaviour into a measurable, reportable contribution.

Rural transport is one of the hardest emissions categories for local councils to address meaningfully. Spare Seat offers a step that requires no infrastructure or subsidy — only the community making use of journeys it was already taking.

For parish councils

Parish councils and their nominated administrators get a full set of tools to manage the platform on behalf of their community. Administrators can:

• Block users who have behaved inappropriately
• Manage a list of frequent destinations for the area — common stops like a supermarket, surgery, or station
• Access usage reports showing rides offered, seats shared, and miles saved
• View all active community members and their account status

A full usage report can be generated at any time, giving councils a clear picture of activity for annual reports, funding bids, or community plan updates. Each parish's data is completely isolated — residents from one community cannot see rides in another.

Spare Seat is available to parish councils under a licence from DRMSITE LTD for a small annual fee.

Your community's data remains yours at all times and can be exported whenever needed.

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Designed for rural communities

Spare Seat has been developed with smaller rural parishes in mind:

• Simple enough for any resident to use on a mobile phone
• No app to download — works in any browser
• Journey alerts mean residents don't have to check daily
• Via stop support for journeys that pass through the village on the way to a destination
• Suitable for clerks, councillors, or a trusted volunteer to administer

Whether the community makes ten journeys a month or a hundred, the platform handles it without any ongoing effort from the council.

From isolation to connection

Without a system

• Residents with no transport rely on family, friends, or expensive alternatives
• Drivers making regular journeys have no easy way to offer spare seats
• Car sharing is informal and limited to existing social networks
• No record of community transport activity for reports or funding bids

With Spare Seat

• Residents can find or offer a lift within their community
• Contact details protected until a driver accepts a request
• Journey alerts mean no one needs to check the board every day
• Councils can report on rides offered, seats shared, and estimated miles saved
• Greater confidence that transport needs are being actively supported
• Fewer single-occupancy journeys, with measurable CO₂ savings the council can report

Supporting good practice

Spare Seat does not replace community transport schemes, volunteer driver services, or demand-responsive transport where they exist. Instead, it provides a complementary layer that costs far less and works alongside whatever provision is already in place.

• Supports councils in demonstrating active engagement with residents' transport needs
• Provides evidence of community transport activity for local plan or funding purposes
• Evidences CO₂ savings through usage reports — supporting climate action plans and net zero commitments
• Tackles social isolation in a practical, low-cost way

For councils that have identified transport as a community priority — whether in a neighbourhood plan, a climate action plan, or a rural needs assessment — Spare Seat offers a tangible and affordable response.

A practical step forward

For many parish councils, supporting residents with transport feels like a problem too large and too expensive to address directly. Spare Seat changes that calculation. The platform is ready to use, costs little to run, and requires no technical knowledge to administer.

It will not solve every transport problem in your community. But it will fill seats that would otherwise travel empty, connect residents who would otherwise have no option, and give your council something concrete to point to when transport comes up at the annual meeting.

Already supporting rural parishes in reducing isolation and sharing journeys.

Simple, transparent pricing

Spare Seat is available to parish councils under a straightforward annual licence, with pricing designed to remain affordable for communities of all sizes.

Standard parish councils (1,000–5,000 residents): £345 per year.

Typically less than the cost of a single community newsletter print run — while providing a year-round service that actively supports residents with transport every week.

This type of annual software licence is typically considered a low-value procurement and can often be approved directly by the council.

Typical pricing

• Small parish councils (under 1,000 residents): £245 per year
• Standard parish councils (1,000–5,000 residents): £345 per year
• Larger parish, town or city councils (over 5,000 residents): £445 per year

For most councils, this works out at well under 50 pence per resident per year.

The licence includes full access to all features: the resident-facing platform, the admin panel, usage reporting, journey alerts, and all future updates.

All prices are inclusive — no VAT is charged.

No long-term contracts. You can start with a single year and continue only if the community finds it useful.

Councils that have introduced Spare Seat have found it becomes a natural part of how residents communicate — particularly for regular journeys like weekly shopping trips, sports fixtures, and medical appointments.

Used by parish and town councils to support a practical, community-led approach to rural transport.

Request a short demonstration or pricing for your parish, opens your email app

See how it works

We'd be happy to provide a short demonstration tailored to your community and answer any questions you may have.

Download our information sheet (PDF)