Agenda item

In accordance with the requirements of Section 100B(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the Chair declared that he intended to include for discussion the following matter requiring urgent attention under Part II:-

 

1.       The Initial Implementation of the Home to School Transport Eligibility Policy:-

 

In response to the number of queries and complaints raised with local Elected Members, during the school summer holidays, and since the commencement of the new school year, the Scrutiny Chairs and Vice-Chairs Group (SCVCG) had instructed the Committee to consider this matter as an urgent item of business at the meeting. 

 

The Chair emphasised that the Committee would not be examining individual cases or specific pick-up points, but focusing on the principle behind the policy and its initial implementation. 

 

The Head of Customers and Education Support introduced the report and outlined the background to the implementation of the policy.  She explained that the Service had put forward the school transport policy as a potential savings option from September 2016 to a Freedoms and Flexibilities Workshop during 2014. 

 

Elected Members, on realising the amount of potential savings associated with this budget, in the region of £300K, had instructed officers to work towards implementing the policy from September, 2015 with a view to protecting the Education Service itself from severe cuts in 2015/16.  This decision had necessitated meeting some tight deadlines in order to publish the proposed policy changes within the statutory requirements of 11 months prior to its implementation. 

 

Prior to the Cabinet approving the ‘Home to School Transport Eligibility Policy’ on the 30^th September, 2014 a letter had been sent to parents who were likely to be affected to draw to their attention the potential introduction of such a policy.  The draft policy had been considered by Communities Scrutiny Committee on the 11^th September, 2014 and by County Council on the 9^th September, 2014.  Following Cabinet’s decision and the policy’s publication in October, 2014 a copy was sent to all schools.  In May, 2015 all parents that had applied for school transport for their children received a letter informing them of the decision to strictly apply the policy from September 2015, and advised that they would be contacted again with the list of designated pick-up points across the county.  A high number of parents had telephoned the Council about the new policy and whilst they acknowledged that its application would inconvenience them a number had commented that they had been surprised to receive a ‘door to door service’ initially. 

 

Officers emphasised that Members had decided that the policy only be applied for high school children in the County.  School transport in Wales was governed by the Learner Travel (Wales) Measure which effectively stipulated that a Local Authority had a duty to make reasonable travel arrangements to facilitate a child’s journey to a secondary school if they lived three miles or more from the nearest suitable school.  The Measure did not stipulate that it was the local authority’s duty to provide transport from the child’s home to the nearest suitable school.  It was the parents/guardians’ responsibility to make sure the child arrived at the pick-up point.  To illustrate this point the Head of Legal Services cited a case taken to the High Court (RV Devon County Council exparte George 1988) where the Council’s decision not to provide school transport to an 8 year old child who lived in a rural area, 2.8 miles from the school and who had to travel to school along an unlit narrow road, had been upheld.

 

The list of proposed designated points had been circulated to Councillors on the 3^rd July and discussed at a Council Briefing session on the 7^th July, 2015, and following suggested amendments at that meeting letters had been sent out to all parents during the week beginning 10^th August to advise them of the pick-up point for their child(ren).  A sufficiently high volume of enquiries had been received following this notification and officers had worked with parents to try and resolve problems.  It was only when the new school year started that it became apparent that some children had been using school transport even though their parents/guardians had never applied for transport in the first place.  Because of this they had not been contacted prior to the policy’s implementation as they were not listed on the school transport database.  This had caused additional queries.

 

Since the implementation of the policy some parents had already worked together to commission their own taxi service to get the children to the designated pick-up point, whilst others were taking it in turns to take the children to the pick-up point.

 

Responding to Members’ questions officers:-

 

·                 outlined the Council’s duty to educate statutory school age children in the County and parental responsibilities with respect to ensuring that their children were able to access the education on offer;

·                 Confirmed that all new pick-up points had been subject to a health and safety risk assessment before being deemed suitable.  Any potential new pick-up points in future would be subject to the same level of risk assessment tests;

·                 illustrated the definition of ‘hazardous routes’ and how its application to pupils who live less than 3 miles from the nearest suitable school differed to that for children who live more than 3 miles from their nearest suitable school but less than 3 miles from their designated school transport pick-up point;

·                 confirmed that the approval of the policy had been through the democratic process in open sessions of the various committees, the only aspect which had gone through the Council Briefing process was the sharing of proposed designated pick-up points for the purpose of seeking local members’ views and opinions on them.  Whilst the policy had been approved by Cabinet, in accordance with its executive powers, the budget cut itself had been approved by County Council when it set the Council’s budget for 2015/16;

·                 advised that the charge for concessionary school transport to a school of their choice, which was not their nearest suitable school, was £50 per term.  A child would only be permitted to use concessionary travel on a bus if there were ‘empty’ seats on a bus.  Whilst some buses seemed to have surplus seats on some days, those seats were deemed as being available for pupils eligible for free school transport attending their nearest suitable school.  If those children did not use the transport provided at all times their ‘seats’ could not be allocated to concessionary travellers;

·                 advised that concessionary travel could not be offered to pupils who may want to use it until the all pupils had settled into their schools, and the Authority knew exactly how many children utilised the free transport offered to them to their nearest suitable school;

·                 confirmed no benefits could be anticipated from offering an opt-in/opt-out of free school transport scheme to the nearest suitable school, as the majority would opt-in even if they only used the transport available on the rare occasion they required it;

·                 advised that free transport usage was regularly reviewed and modes of transport were modified if required.  However, the Council could not commission larger buses on the basis of the number of concessionary travellers on a route, that could only be done based on the numbers of eligible pupils attending their nearest suitable school and who therefore were entitled to free transport;

·                 confirmed that the notice of withdrawal period for concessionary travel was one school term;

·                 advised that the ‘nearest suitable school’ would be either a community school, school that provided education through the medium of Welsh or a faith school, dependent upon parental choice;

·                 confirmed that where appropriate the Council combined service & school contracts to combine loads (for secondary learners only) and that there were no safety concerns with this arrangement

·                 assured members that staff would not have told any parent or guardian that a child should walk to the designated pick-up point, they would have informed them that it was the parent/guardian’s responsibility to ensure they arrived at the designated pick-up point to access the free transport;

·                 advised that regardless of whether the policy was implemented in September 2015 or 2016 the issues which came to light during its implementation would be very similar;

·                 informed Members that if the Council wanted to revert to the previous policy that could be done, but the £300K savings realised from its implementation would need to be found from elsewhere in the Education Service’s budget;

·                 confirmed that officers were looking at each individual query or complaint received and working with parents to try and resolve them.  They were even trying to facilitate the provision of a taxi service for groups of parents who were willing to pay for the service to ensure their children arrived promptly and safely at their designated pick-up points;

·                 Explained that each individual case was judged on its own merits/circumstances.  If individual parents were of the view that the decision not to provide free home to school transport for their child(ren) was not justified they did have a right of appeal to the Head of Education.  If that appeal was dismissed they could utilise the Council’s complaints process, go to the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales or ultimately they could seek a Judicial Review;

·                 reassured members that each query/complaint was looked at on an individual basis and all possible steps were being taken by officers to achieve a satisfactory resolution.

 

At the conclusion of the discussion the Chair thanked Members and officers for an open and frank discussion.  Summing up he requested that Members be provided with links to the trail of discussion/decisions with respect to the policy’s approval and implementation.  He welcomed the Service’s willingness and openness to work with parents/guardians with a view to dealing with each individual query on its own merits and to solve outstanding issues.  He also suggested that it may be useful if information about the concessionary travel policy could be communicated to all Elected Members to enable them to refer to it if they received enquiries from residents, and if an illustration could be provided for the 2/3 mile rule as it related to a ‘hazardous’ route.

 

RESOLVED – that the, subject to the above observations, the Committee:- 

 

(a)            accepted the information received with respect to the initial implementation of the Home to School Transport Eligibility Policy from 2015, and

(b)            requested that a further report be presented to the Committee in November, 2015 reviewing the Policy’s implementation and detailing the measures taken to resolve issues raised during the initial period of its implementation.

 

The Committee agreed that Agenda Item 7 “Community Group Profiling Progress Report” be considered at this juncture in the meeting.