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New plans designed to help local authorities struggling to finance support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) fail to take into account burgeoning home-to-school transport costs.

• Read the report
• Read the report (PDF)
• Inquiry: Home-to-school transport
• Public Accounts Committee

In a new report, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that the plan for addressing spiralling deficits in this area in future years remains unclear.

The Government has now announced plans to write off 90% of the historic deficit from overspending on SEND, which will amount to a cumulative £5bn+ by March ’26, with SEND costs to be met from central departmental budgets from 2028-29.

However, there are still unanswered questions on the plan for any deficits arising between now and 2028. Moreover, while the new funding arrangements will address SEND cost pressures for councils from 2028-29, they do not cover home-to-school transport costs.

Government must clarify, at the earliest opportunity, the level of support it will provide to local authorities with ongoing SEND deficits.

The problems with home-to-school transport are pressing. Parents often experience a cliff-edge for this support post-16, following which age any support is at local authorities’ discretion.

The PAC’s report highlights an accompanying weight of evidence that the system is hard to navigate for parents. Despite this, the Department for Education (DfE) seems apparently unconcerned about the clarity of offering for this age group, or the impact losing transport at 16 may have.

Council efforts to deliver these services are not keeping pace with growing demand, with spending increasing by 106% in real terms between 2015-16 and 2023-24 (currently around £2.5bn annually).

The ongoing decline of bus services, particularly in rural areas, is a long-standing concern for the PAC. Its report notes that better local transport options would reduce home-to-school transport costs, and that resetting expectations about what travel assistance looks like beyond a door-to-door service could also create savings.

For many of the children and young people that use it, particularly those with SEND, transport is not just about going from A to B but also about gaining independence.

A move to local bus franchising with councils in charge of routes, timetables and fares is a possible opportunity to replace expensive contracts with lower-cost alternatives, while safer walking and cycling routes to school could reduce reliance on home to school transport and offer benefits to the community as a whole.

Government should outline how it intends to harness the benefits that improved overall local transport options can have for travel assistance. For example, rather than a taxi from home to school, it could be transport from home to a bus stop or from a bus stop to a place of education.

The report underlines the importance of collecting clear data to oversee home-to-school transport effectively, with the DfE currently in the dark as to who receives it and whether it reaches those most in need.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is also called upon to act in the report, having not set out its plans for monitoring whether its new funding formula reflecting rural vs urban needs for transport is actually working on the ground.

Member comment

Rachel Gilmour MP, Member of the Public Accounts Committee, said:

“We are glad that the government is starting to heed our Committee’s warnings, stretching back through years of multiple inquiries, and are beginning to grasp the nettle that is the SEND emergency. 

"But a problem this chronic and severe demands a response that does not leave any unanswered questions for children and families. Unfortunately, our inquiry has identified a number of glaring ones for home-to-school transport - a problematic system for parents on which government spends multiple billions a year not covered by government’s recent announcements.

“There are things departments might do to improve the current system; by collecting more data on how home-to-school transport is used; by tracking how current funding is improving existing services, particularly in rural areas; by helping parents with the unacceptable cliff-edge often waiting for children who need assisted travel once they turn sixteen.

"But our report sketches out a different future which government must consider: a resetting of what travel assistance might look like by improving local transport infrastructure overall, for the benefit of entire communities. We hope the recommendations in our report help the government work towards making this a reality.”