Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support his Department provides to help children with disabilities travel to and from school.

Local authorities have a statutory duty under section 508B of the Education Act 1996 to make travel arrangements to enable all eligible children of compulsory school age to attend their nearest suitable school. This includes those who live beyond the statutory walking distance (2 miles for children under the age of 8 and 3 miles for children aged 8 and over) and those whose special educational needs, disability or mobility problem mean they could not reasonably be expected to walk to the school. Local authorities spend more than £600 million every year on transport for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.

The Department has allocated more than £70 million to local transport authorities (LTA), enabling them to increase dedicated home to school and college transport capacity over the autumn term. LTAs have flexibility in how they use this funding to meet the needs of local families.

The Government has provided £4.6 billion of funding to support councils through the COVID-19 outbreak.?This funding is un-ringfenced, recognising that local authorities are best placed to decide how to meet the major COVID-19 service pressures in their local area.