Home-to-School Transport

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Tom Gordon]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that point. It is one of the things on which we absolutely agree. I would like to see all parties and especially the governing party put that problem right. As I said, cutting the grant has had real consequences for the decisions that councils make.

Thirdly, we need to see expansion of the statutory minimum more broadly. The current system, which involves a 2-mile walking distance for primary, 3 miles for secondary and a duty that ends at age 16, was designed for a different era and different pattern of schooling. Where school systems have been reorganised, specialist provision has been concentrated and rural bus networks have been allowed to decline, the statutory floor is no longer fit for purpose.

Fourthly, will the Minister confirm that the Government will make data collection on home-to-school transport mandatory, as the PAC recommended? We cannot improve what we do not measure. Voluntary, inconsistent data collection across more than 100 local authorities is not a sufficient basis on which to run a £2.6 billion spending commitment. The Department needs a proper baseline if it is ever to hold local authorities to account and drive genuine improvement.

Home-to-school transport is not a niche issue. It sits at the intersection of SEND, rural sustainability, school attendance, the cost of living and the long-term viability of rural communities. In rural England, school buses are not a luxury, but essential infrastructure. Families across rural communities such as those in North Yorkshire are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for a system that works, keeps their children safe, keeps them in school and does not price them out of the education to which they are legally entitled. There should not be a rural tax on education. That is not too much to ask, and I hope the Minister agrees.

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called to speak in the debate.

[Kevin McKenna (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. Massive congratulations to the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) on securing the debate. This issue matters to so many people around the country.

My constituency is a coastal community, but also very rural in parts. Many of the issues raised by the hon. Member apply directly to Sittingbourne and Sheppey. A notable issue is the recent school allocations in the east of the island of Sheppey that sent people what on paper was a few miles, as the crow flies, but given that it is an island, there is an enormous body of water in the way, and as the Harty ferry from Harty island went many decades ago, it was never going to happen—unless the kids were really good at swimming. They are being sent on a more-than-two-hour journey by public transport, often on snarled-up roads, and we have terrible bus services, like so many rural areas.

However, I want to focus on the issues for children with special educational needs and disabilities and particularly those aged 16 and older. Kent county council has recently changed the criteria that allow people to opt for school transport to their education and has now made it all but impossible for people with special educational needs to secure transport. In fact, more than 50 families have written to me about this in just the last couple of months, since it was announced that the policy was being changed.

Some of the stories that I hear are heartbreaking. Anthony is one young lad. He is 17 years old and non-verbal. He is attending sixth form at the moment. Although he is mobile on his feet, he needs a lot of help with his day-to-day care: his toileting—the ability to toilet—but also his interaction with people if they are on public transport. In fact, he would always need to be chaperoned, which is not something that can now be afforded in this system. That puts him at risk and puts the public at risk as well. He is distraught—visibly so—and his mother is distraught at the fact that now he may be unable to access schools and complete his education. He is just one example of many. They have been through the appeals process, trying to get that overturned, and it is really opaque. When I have written to people at the county council to try to find out what the process is and what the criteria are for challenging these decisions—for Anthony and many other children in this situation—I am told that it is a case of exceptional circumstances only, but then they struggle to define what exceptional circumstances are. As we burrow through this, we find that in the end there is an absolute veto in terms of their local policies, which frankly, to my mind, just means that they can make it up as they see fit. There is no real guidance as to what is and is not possible.

Anthony is not the only one. One of my near neighbours in Sittingbourne is Mason. I went to see him. He is a young lad of 16 with cerebral palsy. He has a fantastic wheelchair. It is a big chunky piece of kit that he requires to get around on. He is having a great time in sixth form at the moment, but from September that is not going to happen, because although nominally some funding has been allocated to him, it is not enough to hire transport. More to the point, when his parents have gone round looking for available transport in the area and have phoned up all nine of the local cab companies in Sittingbourne, not one of them has an adapted vehicle. To the point made about how transport impacts parents and other members of the family, Mason’s father drives their adapted vehicle to work and so is unable to use it to take him to school. Mason’s mother does not drive and has to take their daughter to a different school and get to work herself. One of those two parents is now under pressure to give up work in order to protect Mason’s education, which is going to be vital. This is a lad who could absolutely thrive as an adult if he can get through the key stages.

We know a lot of people with SEND need to go through the later stages in education all the way up to 25 to give them the life skills and ability to interact with other people, and a degree of independence that means people like Mason and other children who are affected can get into work and employment, which we know is one of the Government’s key aims. In a constituency like mine, with particularly high levels of young people not earning or learning, the impact is felt ever further. There are other stories where people have gone through the appeals process. It is a very intrusive process pushed down on people where members of the extended family—uncles and aunts, near friends and quite distant members of the family—are all asked to give a reason why they cannot take the children to school. In one case, members of a family who live in Cornwall were asked to account for why they could not take the child to school, when, of course, my constituency is in Kent. Unless there is a rapid way of travelling, I do not think that is very likely. It is not very plausible and it just speaks to how the whole process is not coherent—and I am being very polite.

The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who is not here, as he often isn’t, came to Kent soon after the election to give his opinion and to tell the Reform administration what he thought should happen. He was very clear. He said it was an enormous waste to spend money on getting kids to school. In fact, he said:

“There are things called parents who for as long as modern times remember have had the aggravation of getting their kids to school.”

That is a very characteristic turn of phrase from him. This is the modern world, not the 1950s or the 1850s. Transport is very complicated and we have a very different relationship with people with disabilities. I think particularly of families in which both parents are working. It really feeds into everything that is happening in Kent under its Reform administration. The leader of the Reform council said that breakfast clubs are a disaster because parents should be feeding their children. The trouble is, when I spoke to the county council to try to get clarity about what the criteria are, it pushed it back on the national Government and said that there is no tight guidance.

In line with the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, who secured the debate, I ask the Minister what we can do nationally to ensure that local authorities deliver what we want as a national policy: getting people into education, work or training, and making sure that everyone has access to a full and vibrant life. Is there a way of updating the statutory guidance for local authorities to include funding for transport for young people who need post-16 SEND transport? We need to get that in black and white so that local authorities have to consider it and cannot flim-flam away in the way that Kent county council has. That is my main ask.

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

I advise Members that if they refer to Members who are not here, they should have let them know beforehand.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

Time is moving on, so before I call the next speaker, I kindly suggest that Members keep their speeches to about six minutes so that we can get everybody in with a similar amount of time.

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[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship in this important debate, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) for securing this debate and for the way he introduced it and shared his constituents’ stories. Our constituencies are very different, but the stories I heard were very familiar. The thread running through them is that children who are reliant on home-to-school transport are often failed.

For another 10 months, my Woking constituents will be served by Surrey county council, and that is a real challenge for them. I have called many times for the children’s services at that council to be investigated and put into special measures, and home-to-school transport is another area in which I think the council lets people down. Surrey has third biggest local authority spend—at the last count, it spent more than £65 million in one year—on home-to-school transport, and it regularly overspends. The vast majority of that money is spent on home-to-school transport for children with special educational needs. Last year, The Daily Telegraph said that

“Workers in Surrey have been left unable to book a taxi first thing in the morning because firms are too busy ferrying pupils to…schools”.

On top of that, I speak to many parents and carers in Woking who are struggling and fighting to get the home- to-school transport that their children need. No one is happy with the system; it is not working for anyone, be they parents, carers, taxpayers or the wider community. It is broken, particularly in Surrey, where the county council has not invested enough in SEND school places. That means that the school places available for SEND children in Woking are often far away, making home-to-school transport absolutely essential. If we had capital investment—an invest-to-save approach—to build more SEND school places, the bill for home-to-school transport could be reduced and the quality of life for my young constituents would improve. Surrey county council is not doing that, and I think that is disgusting.

A young male constituent of mine, who is in a wheelchair because of cerebral palsy and suffers from epilepsy, was given an education place 25 miles away from his home. He had to leave my constituency and go through the next constituency, through the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Alex Brewer), and then into another. The county council did not think that that journey merited home-to-school transport; it said that the child was on their own. That decision was absolutely appalling, but thankfully it was reversed.

My county council has also tried to suggest that children should travel on inappropriate routes so that it can avoid providing home-to-school transport. One young girl was told to walk down a narrow country lane, with no streetlights and no pavement, to ensure that she would not qualify for home-to-school transport. Yet again, we got the right decision via tribunal, following complaints from my office, but parents should not have to fight time and again to get what they are entitled to.

I therefore echo the calls from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, especially for a joined-up approach to school places and home-to-school transport. He talked a lot about the challenges for home-to-school transport in rural areas. I agree that the rural services delivery grant was important, and it is sad that it has gone. Surrey is the fifth most congested place in the country, so there are other challenges in my Woking constituency. Having a home-to-school transport system in a congested county is a real challenge.

Another issue that I have raised before is safeguarding. I have led Westminster Hall debates about safeguarding, following the appalling abuse, torture and murder of my 10-year-old constituent, Sara Sharif. That case has huge implications for local authorities and children’s services—I will not repeat those now—but it also has a significant impact on home-to-school transport. Sara’s father and murderer was a licensed taxi driver. He was employed by the county council to support vulnerable children with home-to-school transport. Even though, from day one in her life, the council knew that Sara was at risk from her father, it did not give that information to the taxi licensing team or the home-to-school transport team.

I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde). I was there when he raised this issue at Education questions and at Prime Minister’s questions. There are clearly safeguarding issues, and I urge the Minister to meet me so that we can improve the situation. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 made notable improvements on data sharing, but I do not believe it goes far enough to have stopped what happened in Surrey.

I hope this debate forces the Government to review home-to-school transport and reassure constituents that services will not be taken away from them. I believe that we can deliver better value for money and the better service that young people deserve.

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

The Front Benchers will have roughly 10 minutes each.

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[Jack Rankin (Windsor) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) for securing this important debate, and hon. Members across the House for their thoughtful contributions. When introducing the debate, the hon. Gentleman rightly advocated for his constituents, talking primarily about North Yorkshire. Although he left in some political barbs about his Conservative-controlled local council, he, like the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), had the decency to recognise that the problem is not local, but is faced by all counties and councils.

My right hon. Friends the Members for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith) and for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) highlighted the scale of the challenge in North Yorkshire, which is now the highest spending local authority in the country, at £52.5 million a year. When talking about North Yorkshire specifically, we must consider the context of the council having one of the worst outcomes in the country from the Government’s so-called “fair” funding review, as well as losing the rural services delivery grant. I am afraid to say that this Government have whacked rural areas quite broadly. Honestly, it is felt on the Opposition Benches that that takes a partisan flavour.

The hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) made a fluid and passionate speech. I am not familiar with the geography of his part of Kent, but it is clearly not sensible for councils not to take into account where bodies of water are—obviously, that is utterly ridiculous. The hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) said that the failure of local authorities to build spaces locally is upstream of this issue, and that building places locally where children and parents want them would help remedy the problem.

The speech from the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) was one of the more moving contributions to the debate. He articulated the story of Lewis, which is disgraceful. I hope that in the Minister’s response, she will assure the hon. Gentleman that he will get the changes that he is campaigning for. The hon. Members for North East Hampshire (Alex Brewer) and for Woking (Mr Forster) talked about the necessity of safe walking routes to school. Often, councils mark their own homework in determining that, so I would be interested to hear how the Minister might be able to hold councils to account on upholding their statutory obligation.

In this country, legislation is intended to ensure that no child is prevented from accessing education due to lack of transportation, which all hon. Members here support. However, the reality is that growing demand and spiralling costs are causing councils to question the sustainability of their current policies. An estimated 520,000 pupils use local authority-funded home-to-school transport, which cost councils a staggering £2.3 billion in 2023-24—a 70% real-terms increase on the cost in 2015-16. Of that money, £1.2 billion was spent on transporting under-16s with special educational needs to school—a figure that has gone up by 106% in real terms since 2015.

Home-to-school transport is about more than just getting children to school. The Public Accounts Committee found through its evidence gathering that for many children and young people, home-to-school transport is also about gaining a sense of independence, building their confidence and preparing for life beyond school; I know from speaking to my constituents that it is also relied on by parents so that they can go to work. However, the figures show that the rising cost of home-to-school transport is placing significant financial burdens on councils, which, they warn, is making delivery of their statutory obligations increasingly unsustainable.

If meeting statutory obligations is becoming an increasing challenge, the non-statutory things that make our communities what they are all get squeezed. We also know that local authorities are consistently spending more on home-to-school transport than they have budgeted. In my time in the cabinet of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in the mid-2010s, the home-to-school transport budget was one that continually popped out with significant pressures. I know that it is many magnitudes different today.

We have to look at how we can make home-to-school transport more sustainable for the future. We have had many discussions in this House about the pressure on the SEND system more broadly. While many questions remain, it is right that the Government are talking about reform. Children deserve the right support, and parents want a system that works for them and not against them. As Members have highlighted, the huge increase in the number of children with EHCPs, which went up by 166% between January 2015 and January 2025, has had a knock-on impact on demand for home-to-school transport.

The National Audit Office estimates that around a third of pupils with EHCPs attend special schools. As those schools tend to serve broader geographical areas, it is more likely that their pupils will live beyond a statutory walking distance and therefore qualify for transport. A survey conducted by the Local Government Association suggests that the average cost per child of providing SEND transport is now nearly £9,000 per year. That is almost triple the average cost of providing mainstream transport, which is just over £3,000 per child.

Effective SEND reform is essential if councils are going to be able to sustain school transport services for those who rightly require them. For SEND children, the Education Secretary has said that the Government will

“respond to the challenges that local authorities are facing with home-to-school transport…by improving provision closer to home.”—[Official Report, 23 February 2026; Vol. 781, c. 75.]

That is welcome in principle. However, we know that implementing that scale of reform will take a substantial amount of time. The bulk of the reforms will not be introduced until 2029 at the earliest. Local authorities and children who rely on their services need help now, not in three or four more years.

In some instances, I am afraid to say that we are actually going backwards. In my own constituency, the much-needed Chiltern Way Academy Trust, a 100-place specialist school that was promised for west Windsor, was withdrawn from the Government’s free school programme. Instead, £5.4 million of additional high needs capital funding was offered and accepted by the Liberal Democrat-controlled royal borough. In my view, that is a deeply disappointing short-termist decision. I am sure that is a story replicated across many constituencies across the country.

What are the Government are doing now to help local authorities cut the ballooning cost of home-to-school transport in the immediate term? What specific assessment has the Minister’s Department conducted of the longer-term impact of SEND reforms on the cost of home-to-school transport? The Public Accounts Committee has warned that plans to write off 90% of the historic deficit from overspend on SEND

“fail to take into account burgeoning home to school transport costs.”

I implore the Minister to urgently clarify what those funding arrangements will actually mean for home-to-school transport cost pressures.

It is also worth highlighting that school places nearer to home could go a long way towards supporting young people to build their independence as they move into adulthood. While independent travel is not possible for everyone, it is right that the Government make every effort to support those who could use public transport to start building experiences while they are in school. The Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport found that travel experience from daily to-and-from school transport could help children to become independent and use public transport. In some cases, helping children gain the tools that they will need is what true support might look like.

Rather than launching attacks on individual councils for decisions to align their policies with DFE guidance and address rising, unsustainable financial pressures, we need to look at how we can support all councils to manage those pressures and make home-to-school transport sustainable for the future. That is not just an issue facing a handful of councils. The spiralling cost of home-to-school transport is a nationwide issue, and without urgent action from the Government, those pressures will only continue to grow.

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

I ask the Minister to leave a few minutes at the end for the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) to wind up.