Home-to-School Transport

Debate between Will Forster and Derek Twigg

Thursday 4th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[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.