A wireless communications system is described which comprises a base station, a relay device, and a terminal device. The terminal device is operable to receive from the base station an allocation of uplink resources for transmitting uplink data to the relay device, and to transmit uplink data to the relay device using the uplink resources allocated to the terminal device. The relay device is operable to receive the transmitted uplink data from the terminal device on the allocated resources, to receive an allocation of uplink resources for relaying the received uplink data to the base station, and to transmit the received uplink data to the base station using the uplink resources allocated to the relay device.