Peterborough City Council endorses new school transport services for SEND children

New plans to provide school and social transport services for eligible children with Special Education Needs and, or, a Disability (SEND) for the next three years have been tabled by Peterborough City Council.

The proposed Transport Transformation Strategy would provide for those who cannot reasonably be expected to walk to school as a result of mobility issues.

It would also provide transportation for those living beyond two miles distance if they are below the age of 8, and beyond three miles distance if aged between 8 and 16, if their parents were in receipt of the maximum level of Working Tax Credits.

It would also provide for children who cannot reasonably be expected to walk to school because of the nature of the route they have to take being considered as either unavailable or unsafe to walk.

The transport teams in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough currently provide transportation for journeys from home to school and for other social care needs.

But there are issues surrounding the current delivery capacity and modernisation of the ways that council’s deliver transport.

So, what’s been said?

‘Significant impact on services’

The assistant director of capital and place planning, Fran Cox introduced the scheme on November 2 at the Children & Education Strategy Committee.

She said: “At Peterborough City Council there are currently seven members of staff responsible for managing the school transport service, which caters for approximately 2,000 pupils using 233 vehicles, having a combined value of £5 million.

"But we’ve seen significant growth both in the mainstream and SEND population of children and this is having a significant impact on the services that we are able to deliver because of budget pressures, coupled with inflation rises associated with the cost of transportation.

“What this new Transport Transformation Strategy proposes is to explore different options for the delivery of certain transport functions where there is a high volume of routes and passengers. The market is changing, and responding to the national climate on a daily basis, there needs to be scope to ascertain best value.

"There is an obligation on the council to move to greater use of electric vehicles and the infrastructure that’s needed to support this will mean transport solutions need to be consistently reviewed.”

£400 a day for specialist ambulance

Councillor Rylan Ray (Conservative, Eye, Thorney and Newborough) wanted to know more about the cost of the current and proposed services.

“There are 42 routes that carry only one child, costing £13,000 a year to run. Each child goes to school for 190 days, with a journey to and from school equalling 280 journeys per annum. That works out at about £34 per journey. That could get me in a black cab from Peterborough to Huntingdon.

"That’s a lot of money to get one child to school on a journey hopefully much closer than Huntingdon. How on earth can you justify that figure?”

Ms Cox replied: “I would perhaps shock you by saying that that would be one of our cheaper routes. We have young people who need high levels of care in a specialist ambulance provision where the journeys are costing around £400 per day. There is only one of those in Peterborough, but we have eight in Cambridgeshire.

“This is the reason for the report and the reason why we want to diversify, because we’re so much in the hands of the market at the moment. Providers can virtually charge what they like, knowing that we have a statutory duty to get these children to school.

“It is extremely expensive and the mechanisms we want to put in place revolve around ways in which we can get better value for money per child, per route. So, we’re looking at ways in which we can partner more strategically with Aragon.

"You will be aware of the well-publicised issues with Stagecoach recently withdrawing rural routes, which hasn’t helped.”

Ambulance service transporting school children

“We’ve had conversations with the ambulance service asking them if they would take some of the really poorly children to school for us – they know these children already because they transport them to and from their medical appointments at Addenbrookes, so it makes sense for us to be partnered with them.

"We are making progress, one of our officers managed to save £27,000 per annum with a single conversation by moving two children onto one route that had previously only been a solo run but we need to look at much more.

“We want to get the strategic elements of this report in place within a year so that we are satisfied we’re being as efficient as possible. The bigger question is ‘do we need a fleet? Do we need to think about partnering with Cambridgeshire and leasing a transportation fleet? Do we need to employ drivers directly? These are bigger conversations that we must explore, going forward.”

Going to school in community

Councillor David Over (Conservative, Barnack) asked: “How are you going to prevent rural isolation?”

Ms Cox answered: “Our strategy for transport is based around how we can provide local places for local children, so that they can go to school in their local community whether that community is in a rural setting, or in the city.

"It’s tricky when you’re dealing with rural geography because statutorily you are entitled to transport if you live more than two miles from your home to school, and that is more likely to be the case in rural locations – so we have to be certain that when we’re ‘place planning’ for children, we are certain we choose the right location and bring transportation issues firmly to the table.”

The strategy recommends the proposals be brought about within the next three years.

Members of the Children and Education Scrutiny Committee welcomed the report and unanimously endorsed its proposals.