A communications device and method, in which data is communicated via a wireless access interface to a destination communications device with a device-to-device communication procedure. The communications device encodes the data, as data units, for transmission to the destination communications device with a repeat request-type protocol, the encoding providing an indication whether the data has been received correctly. The communications device transmits the encoded data units to the destination communications device, and receives an acknowledgement ACK message that one of the encoded data units has been correctly received by the destination communications device, or a negative acknowledgement NACK message that the encoded data units were not received correctly by the destination communications device. The ACK or NACK message is transmitted by another communications devices of a group of communications devices, acting as a relay communications device, which received and retransmitted the ACK or NACK message from the destination communications device.