Pupils using taxis costing taxpayers £1,000s a day
TAXIS driving disabled Bristol children to school are costing the taxpayer several thousand pounds a day.
Due to a shortage of special school places within the city and rising numbers of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), costs have shot up.
Many pupils are driven to schools several miles outside Bristol, with the furthest daily journey to Petherton Park School, in North Petherton, 48 miles away in Somerset. Details of the staggering distances and costs of these taxi trips were revealed after a recent Freedom of Information request.
The trip to Petherton Park School costs Bristol City Council £150 for one pupil. Many other taxi journeys are similarly expensive, despite the schools being closer to Bristol.
Trips to some schools within Bristol are costing the council more than £1,000 a day, although these are shared by several pupils. According to council budget documents, the recent rise in demand for home-to-school transport is “unprecedented”.
The budget documents said: “The council has faced unprecedented demand for home-to-school transport, coupled with increased service costs, partly due to the lack of local education provision resulting in many more children travelling out of the authority area to access specialised education provision.”
There are many other examples of expensive daily trips. The council is paying £1,404.52 for 13 pupils to travel to the primary site at Briarwood School in Bristol; £1,773.80 for 18 pupils to travel to the Napier Miles site at Kingsweston School; and £512.90 for four pupils to travel to Weston College in Weston-super-Mare.
The longest routes are Swalcliffe Park in Oxfordshire and the Forum School in Hampshire, which are 73 miles and 50 miles away, although they are termly boarding. Lufton Manor College in Yeovil and Infocus School in Exeter are also weekly boarding, which are 45 miles and 80 miles away.
Besides Petherton Park School, the longest daily trips are 42 miles to Talocher School in Monmouth; 36 miles to Ysgol Ty Monmouth; 31 miles to Dovecote School in Bridgwater; and 30 miles to Weston College. Some of these trips are accompanied by paid escorts, who then have to be driven back to Bristol.
This year the council expects to spend £11.8 million on home-toschool transport, for about 1,200 passengers. Councillors have previously been told that some taxi firms can make a lot of money from providing home-to-school transport.
Speaking to a scrutiny commission last September, Vanessa Wilson, director of children and education transformation, said: “If you speak – and I’m not talking about Bristol – to taxi firms generally, they will say to you their biggest money-maker is local authorities and home-to-school travel.”
To bring costs down, the council is planning to buy a fleet of minibuses and pay its own staff to drive pupils to school and back. A recent public consultation also proposed scrapping the service for pupils aged 16 or over, and making younger disabled children walk to drop-off points. Another proposed option is training young people on how to use public transport independently.