Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether she plans to allow local authorities to sell spare seats on school-only transport services without triggering full Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations compliance requirements.

This Government strongly supports the aims of PSVAR and breaking down the barriers to opportunity. We believe that children and young people should be able to choose to travel to and from school with their classmates if they wish to. However, progress with PSVAR compliance has been slower than hoped in respect of home-to-school services.

Closed door home-to-school services serve pupils whose needs are known in advance. Many disabled pupils also either attend specialist education settings or are provided with door-to-door transport and would struggle to access mainstream services even if they were PSVAR compliant.

As current exemptions were due to cease in July 2026, and following careful consideration, I decided to introduce new four-year special authorisations for paid for, closed door home-to-school services.

On 5 June I wrote to the coach sector informing them of this decision noting that as with the current Medium-Term-Exemptions (MTE’s), exemptions will be offered subject to operators meeting specific conditions which will be laid out in full when eligible operators are invited to apply. The conditions, which place the needs of disabled children and young people at the core, include maintaining a minimum number of PSVAR compliant coaches and providing a compliant coach on request at no extra cost.

The sale of spare seats on school-only services is a matter for local authorities.