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Loading page content, please wait...10 accessible vehicles|Serving London and the South East, seven days a week
10 accessible vehicles|Serving London and the South East, seven days a week
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Loading page content, please wait...Frequently asked questions
Three ways, and all of them reach the same coordinators. Call the office, use the transport request form on this website, or email us. The form collects everything we need in one pass, which usually means fewer follow-up calls, but there is no disadvantage to phoning if you would rather talk it through.
Forty-eight hours gives us the best chance of matching the right vehicle, and that matters most for powered wheelchairs where fewer vehicles in the fleet will suit. That said, we deliberately hold some short-notice capacity for hospital discharges and urgent appointments, so always call rather than assuming we are full.
Yes. Transport runs seven days a week including early mornings and evenings. The booking office keeps standard hours, so a Sunday journey is arranged in advance during the week rather than booked on the day. Contracted out-of-hours and weekend cover can be arranged as a standing agreement.
Yes, and most of our bookings work this way - a family member, a care home, a ward, a social worker. We ask for a contact number for the person travelling as well as the person booking, because the driver calls ahead on the day and it needs to reach the right phone.
Our core coverage is South East London and the surrounding boroughs, with regular work across Greater London and into Kent. Longer transfers, hospital repatriations and out-of-area placements are quoted individually and we will travel well beyond the region for those.
We tell you straight away rather than accepting the booking and hoping. Where we can, we will suggest what to try instead. An operator that says yes to everything is an operator that will eventually leave someone waiting.
No. Our vehicles are built so you board by ramp or powered lift and travel seated in your own chair. If you would prefer to transfer to a passenger seat we will help you do that instead - it is your choice, not a condition of travelling with us.
With a four-point tie-down system. Four straps anchor the chair's frame to tracking bolted through the vehicle floor, tensioned at the front and rear. You then wear a lap and diagonal occupant belt that is anchored to the vehicle, not to the chair. The straps hold the chair; the belt holds you. Both are used on every journey and re-checked before we move.
The make and model if you know it, or four measurements: width, length, your total height when seated in it, and the combined weight of chair and occupant. Height is the one people most often overlook and the one that most often decides which vehicle we send, particularly for chairs with tilt or a riser.
Yes, with advance notice so the right vehicle is rostered rather than hoped for. We need the chair width and the combined weight, because both the lift rating and the internal width have hard limits. Give us a few days where you can.
Yes, with one important caveat: class 2 scooters are not designed or tested as vehicle seats. The passenger transfers into a proper passenger seat and the scooter travels secured separately. If transferring is not possible for you, a wheelchair-based journey is the safer route and we will talk that through with you.
Tell us, because a loan chair can be a completely different size and weight from your own. It is a two-minute conversation that avoids the vehicle being wrong on the day, and it happens more often than you would think.
Yes. Door-through-door assistance is the standard, not an extra. The driver comes to your door, assists you to the vehicle, boards and secures you, and does the same in reverse at the other end - to the reception desk, the clinic entrance or the ward door as appropriate.
We call you. Traffic, a previous journey overrunning or a passenger needing longer than planned all happen, and the worst version of it is being left wondering. If we are going to be significantly late you will hear from the office or the driver, not from an empty street.
Yes, and for anything under roughly ninety minutes it is usually the better choice. The vehicle and driver stay with you, so there is no second wait for a vehicle to come back. Waiting time is included in the fare quoted at booking rather than added afterwards. For longer appointments we release the vehicle and return at an agreed time.
Ring us. It is a scheduling question, not a problem. If your driver is waiting, they wait. If we released the vehicle, we re-time the collection. The only thing that makes it difficult is not knowing - we cannot re-plan around a delay nobody has told us about.
Yes to all three, and escort and carer seats carry no additional charge. Tell us how many people are travelling at the booking stage so we allocate a vehicle with enough seats alongside the wheelchair space. Assistance dogs need no notice, though telling us lets us plan the floor space.
On regular and contracted journeys, yes - that is a deliberate commitment rather than a coincidence. Each route has a named driver and an identified cover crew who has run it before. For occasional one-off bookings we cannot promise it, but if a particular driver worked well for you, tell us and we will try.
It depends on the distance, the vehicle your mobility requirement needs, and whether the driver waits. What we can promise is the pricing basis: a fixed fare quoted and confirmed in writing before you commit. There is no meter running while you board, and no surcharge for the ramp, the lift, the escort or the assistance.
Once the journey is confirmed and priced, we email a secure hosted payment link from our payment provider. Card details are never entered on this website and we will never ask for them by phone or email. Recurring schedules can be set up on Direct Debit instead, and organisations are invoiced on account.
Never, under any circumstances. If someone contacts you claiming to be from Ufirst and asks for card details, bank details, or tells you our bank account has changed, do not act on it. Call us on the number on this website to verify. This is worth being firm about because transport and care customers are actively targeted by this kind of fraud.
Give us as much notice as you reasonably can and in most cases there is nothing to pay. Cancellation terms are set out in your booking confirmation and depend on the notice given and the type of booking, since a day-rate group hire is a different commitment from a single local journey. We are not looking to charge someone whose appointment was cancelled by the hospital.
If we failed to deliver a journey you had booked and paid for, yes. Card payments are refunded to the original payment method through our payment provider. Account customers are credited in the same invoice cycle rather than being put through a dispute process. We would rather resolve it than argue about it.
If you are eligible for NHS non-emergency patient transport on medical grounds, that service is free to the patient - but eligibility is assessed by the NHS, not by us. It is worth asking the department arranging your appointment before you pay for a private journey. We would rather point you there and lose the fare.
Call or email and we will exchange documentation - our insurance certificates, DBS and safeguarding policies and references, against your supplier onboarding pack. A spot-purchase account can be live in days. A contracted route takes longer on purpose, because we want to plan and trial the route before passengers are on board.
Yes, and we will treat the PO as a required field rather than a note if that is your requirement. Give us the reference at account setup or at booking and it appears on every relevant invoice line. A missing PO reference is the most common cause of a delayed transport payment, and it is entirely avoidable.
Yes. Contracted routes and day-centre runs are billed as a fixed periodic charge rather than as a stream of individual fares, which gives your finance team one predictable figure per budget line. It can be suspended over school holidays and re-quoted when the passenger list materially changes.
Monthly as standard, or termly for school-year contracts. Journeys delivered against journeys booked, punctuality against the agreed collection window, cancellations attributed by cause, incidents, and spend broken down by route, department or cost centre.
Yes. Send us the specification, the portal details and the deadline. We will tell you quickly whether it is a route we can genuinely crew for the full term - and if it is not, we will say so rather than submitting on everything and sorting it out afterwards.
Every driver and passenger assistant holds enhanced DBS clearance before they carry a passenger - not pending, not in progress. Clearance is recorded and re-verified on a rolling basis, and we can evidence it for a commissioner or a contract audit.
Wheelchair securing and restraint fitting, ramp and powered lift operation, assisted transfers, safe manoeuvring, infection control awareness and safeguarding. Training is refreshed rather than treated as a one-off induction, because handling skills decay and equipment changes.
Yes - public liability and passenger insurance appropriate to contracted passenger transport. We will supply certificates for your records, for a commissioner's file or as part of a tender submission. If your funder requires specific cover levels confirmed in writing, ask and we will provide it.
Crews are briefed on what to report and to whom. A concern about a passenger's welfare is raised with the office the same day and escalated to the relevant designated safeguarding lead or local authority team as appropriate. It is recorded, and it is not sat on.
We collect only what the journey requires and keep it no longer than we need to. Health and disability information is special category data under UK GDPR, so access is limited to the coordinators planning the journey and the crew delivering it. Our privacy policy sets out what we hold, why, how long for and your rights over it.
Call or email the office and say what happened. We aim to acknowledge within one working day and to give you an outcome within ten working days - including, where relevant, what we have changed as a result. If we got it wrong we would far rather hear it from you than not know.
Describe the journey or the situation and we will give you a straight answer, including when the answer is that we are not the right people for it.
Monday to Friday, 07:00 - 19:00
Tell us about the journey and we will confirm the vehicle, the crew and the cost before anything is booked.
Prefer to talk it through? 020 8058 9879