Huge rise in demand for cancer patient transport in County Durham
A cancer support charity says they don't have enough volunteers to cope
Last updated 1st May 2025
A County Durham cancer support charity say they do not have enough volunteers to cope with the huge rise in demand for their services.
They offer transport to and from appointments for patients who desperately need it.
But they say they do not have enough drivers to help take those with cancer to where they need to be.
Allison White, founder of The Great Aycliffe Cancer Support Group, said: "With any sort of voluntary position, it's only supposed to be flexible, a day here and a day there per week but unfortunately, our volunteer drivers at the moment in one day can do like three jobs which isn't ideal because they didn't want to do that but because they don't want to let the cancer patients down, we're still taking them.
"We've seen huge increases certainly in new cancer diagnoses and many obviously have got the cancer back as well, so that has put a huge strain on the respect of the services that we provide. Obviously we're doing our best but we can't do this without volunteers.
"It's supposed to be Monday to Friday but our drivers are doing Saturdays are Sundays even because there's so many people being diagnosed with cancer and they're so behind that they're needing to get people in on a weekend. We need to be able to delegate our volunteers to be able to help more patients.
"The charity was paying out to the volunteers for mileage expenses £400 a month in total, that was pre-Covid and now we're obviously at nearly £5,000. It's scary and it's very hard for a charity like ours. We're doing what we can and obviously we need people on board to help us get these patients to hospital.
"If we look at this way, we take in £5,000 and if we're paying out that much per month to drivers, we haven't even got enough to do 12-months of driving because £5,000 x six months is £30,000 and for a charity like ours, that's a lot of money.
"We don't like to turn people away because we've had people who've actually said to us that they didn't go for the appointment because they would have had three buses, and so hearing stories like that makes you more determined to keep it going."
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