A communications device, comprising a transmitter configured to transmit signals to one or more other communications devices via a wireless access interface to perform device-to-device communications, the wireless access interface being provided for transmitting signals to an infrastructure equipment of a mobile communications network when within a radio coverage area of the infrastructure equipment, a receiver configured to receive signals from the one or more other communications devices via the wireless access interface, the wireless access interface being provided for receiving signals from the infrastructure equipment of the mobile communications network when within the radio coverage area of the infrastructure equipment, and a controller for controlling the transmitter and the receiver to transmit or to receive the signals via the wireless access interface to transmit or to receive data represented by the signals, and the controller is configured in combination with the transmitter and the receiver to transmit signals representing the data to a first in-coverage communications device acting as a source relay node for the communications device, the first in-coverage communications device being able to act as a relay node for the communications device when out-of-coverage so that the receiver cannot receive the signals from the infrastructure equipment or the transmitter cannot transmit the signals to the infrastructure equipment, the first in-coverage communications device being able to transmit signals to the infrastructure equipment of the mobile communications network, to receive signals representing the data from the first in-coverage communications device acting as the source relay node, the source relay node being within a coverage area of the infrastructure equipment of the mobile communications network, the source relay node being configured to transmit the signals representing the data received from the communications device to the infrastructure equipment and to transmit the signals representing the data to the communications device which are received from the infrastructure equipment, subject to predetermined conditions, to automatically start measurements of a received signal strength of one or more beacon signals received from one or more other in-coverage communications devices which can act as a relay node for the communications device, based on the measurements of the received signal strength of the one or more received beacon signals, to select one of the other in-coverage communications devices to act as a target relay node by automatically switching from the first in-coverage communications device acting as a source relay node to one of the other in-coverage communications devices acting as a target relay node without receiving a handover instruction, and to transmit the signals representing the data to one of the other in-coverage communications devices to act as a target relay node for transmitting the data to the infrastructure equipment after establishing core network context information based on a prior knowledge of the communications device, or to receive the signals representing the data from one of the other in-coverage communications devices acting as the target relay node which have been received from the infrastructure equipment, wherein the predetermined conditions include a signal strength of a signal received from the first of the in-coverage communications device falling below a predetermined threshold.