May I please make an appeal through your letters page to the good readers to ask them to help a local charity in a practical way?

Ilkley and District Good Neighbours Community Transport provides safe and accessible transport for residents in the LS29 postcode area, who for reasons of age, disability, ill health, social isolation or lack of public transport are unable to take advantage of facilities and other services.

Two of our minibuses are fully adapted for use by people with mobility problems.

We have a third vehicle, an 11-seat standard minibus, which is now more than ten years old and we would like to replace this with a fully accessible 16-seat minibus.

This will give us greater scope to assist older people and those with disabilities.

It will also give us the increased capacity required to satisfy current unmet demand.

As part of our efforts to raise the circa £35,000 we need, we are competing in the Community Force scheme operated by the NatWest Bank. Under this scheme, £6,000 is available to successful organisations.

We have passed the first stage of selection with our application and our appeal is now published on NatWest’s website.

The selection process is now to determine which three projects get the most votes in a region and it is with this stage that we seek the help of your readers: Would you please be kind enough to vote for our project? It is a relatively simple process to vote for us, either online or by phone.

To vote online, visit http://communityforce.natwest.com/projects/. You will need to register, and then search by town – we are the only Ilkley project to reach this stage of the competition. Once your registration is confirmed, you then need to click on “Vote For Us”. Alternatively, you can phone NatWest’s helpdesk at no charge on 0800 2100 246.

They will accept your vote for Ilkley and District Good Neighbours Community Transport and check out with you some time later that your call was indeed genuine.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to register your vote at NatWest’s branches.

We are currently sitting at number four in the pecking order – please help us to get into the top three.

Please note, noon on October 24, is the deadline for voting.

John Jewitt

Chairman, Ilkley and District Good Neighbours Community Transport