School runs.
Local taxis.
Fresh produce.
Your price.

Existing apps either dispatch through a call centre (engaged tones, no answer at 11pm) or push you to the cheapest driver in a regional pool that may have nobody nearby after dark. LIFT works the other way around. You post the trip, every Cumbria-licensed driver within range sees it on their phone, and any of them can bid their own price and ETA. You pick the bid you want. There is no dispatcher to call, no hold music, no thirty-minute estimate that turns into ninety.

You enter your pickup, your drop-off and any vehicle preferences (Standard, XL, Estate, WAV, Executive). Drivers within 5km see the request live on their phone with the pickup and drop-off addresses, the distance, and the time. Each driver who wants the job submits a price and an ETA. You see the bids stream in (usually within 30 seconds) and pick the one you like best, by price, ETA, or driver rating.

Safe Return is a safeguarding feature for young people heading out at night, particularly in rural areas where finding a taxi after 11pm is unreliable. As a parent or trusted adult, you link your young person via phone and pre-book a guaranteed Cumbria-licensed driver to be on standby until a cutoff time you set. The driver gets a £5 reservation fee for committing to the slot. Your young person gets gentle in-app prompts at 90, 45 and 15 minutes before cutoff, plus a one-tap "I am ready" button that dispatches the driver to their live location. If they do not respond by cutoff, you get a notification with one-tap actions: dispatch the driver to their last known location, extend the cutoff by 30 minutes, or call them directly. The ride fare is only charged if the ride actually happens, so if your young person catches a lift with a friend you only pay the £5 reservation.

Existing platforms run city-scale offices and pay for national ad campaigns. We do not. LIFT is built and run inside Cumbria by people who already know the council, the licensing system and the geography. Our cost base is a fraction of a national platform. Ten percent is enough to keep the lights on; the rest stays with the driver and inside the county.

Add your child with their school and year. The system matches you with parents within 1.5 miles of you whose children go to the same school at the same morning window. Drivers who hold a current Enhanced DBS certificate (which we re-verify on a 2-year cycle) bid on the daily route. Existing parents in a pool approve any new joiner before they ride. Fares are pre-authorised on your card when the pool matches and held in escrow until the school confirms your child has safely arrived. Then 90% releases to the driver. Capacity is hard-locked at the database level: a four-seat car can never carry a fifth child.

Every LIFT driver holds a current Cumbria Council taxi or PHV licence, checked against the council ledger by hand before they go live. School pool drivers additionally pass an Enhanced DBS check with a 2-year renewal cycle. Vehicles are checked for current MOT and insurance. No driver can take a single fare until all of that is in place, and any one of them lapsing freezes the account until it is reinstated.

Every active LIFT ride has live driver tracking on your phone (and on a trusted contact phone if you choose to share the trip). An SOS button on every ride opens a one-tap alert to your trusted contacts and to LIFT support, with your live location attached. Driver and rider numbers are masked, calls route through the app, so neither sees the other personal mobile.

LIFT only operates within the historical Cumbria county boundary (everything that used to be Cumbria before the 2023 unitary authority split, so Cumberland and Westmorland and Furness combined). If you try to book a pickup or drop-off outside, the app will say so. We will not become a national platform. If and when we expand, it will be deliberate and to neighbouring rural counties that share the same local-first model.

Browse the catalogue of partner farms, add what you want to a basket, pick a delivery slot from the next 3 days. The same Cumbria-licensed driver who handles taxi runs collects your order from the farm and brings it to your door inside that slot. You pay the producer directly through us. We add a flat delivery fee that goes to the driver.

For taxi rides and produce deliveries, the driver is paid the moment the trip completes via Stripe Connect, minus the ten percent platform fee. For school pools, the fare is held in escrow and released when the school confirms safe arrival. Drivers can request an instant payout to their bank account at any time.

You can cancel through the app at no cost any time before they accept your bid, and within 2 minutes after acceptance. After that a £3 cancellation fee applies and 50% of it goes to the driver. If a driver cancels on you mid-route or fails to arrive, you do not pay and LIFT credits a future ride. School pool cancellations on an active run trigger a partial capture (50% to the driver for compensation) and refund the rest.