Call to review £60m SEN taxi service
‘I am not satisfied we are paying market rates and not being taken for a ride’
The county’s former highways boss has called for an internal audit of costly taxi journeys provided to special needs children, to avoid “being taken for a ride”.
Cllr David Brazier (Con) has claimed it is “common parlance” outside Kent County Council (KCC) circles that the authority overpays for the service.
Transport for youngsters with special educational needs (SEN) will cost the authority £60million in 2023/24. More than 6,000 SEN children in the county are given free taxis to classes.
Cllr Brazier spoke out at the council’s scrutiny committee meeting in Maidstone, in a debate about home to school transport (HST).
The former cabinet member for highways and transport hoped an audit would identify savings to assist in KCC’s need to find tens of millions of pounds of efficiencies in the face of soaring prices and squeezed budgets.
Cllr Brazier told members: “It is common parlance outside this authority that the authority
overpays for the services it receives from the transport market because there is very little capacity that we have not already taken up.
“So that when further journeys are required, they can be provided at cost which is well above the market rate – that is probably the kindest way to put it.
“The transport officers had an account of how those market figures or above market figures were arrived at but I
myself am not truly satisfied that we are paying market rates and that we are not, to resort to the vernacular, being taken for a ride.”
He suggested an internal audit could make “selective samples” of journeys and how the costs are arrived and whether they are “fair and in accordance with the market rates”.
Last year a review into KCC’s handling of school transport for SEN children identified a
number of “serious flaws”. Earlier this year Liberal Democrat group leader Cllr Antony Hook called on the authority to introduce an inhouse school taxi service to save cash.
At the time, KCC reported HST costs for SEN pupils between July 2022-23 rocketed by £15m and that spend was driven by a near 11% (668) rise in the number of SEN children being carried by cab.
Speaking last week, cabinet
member for education Cllr Rory Love sounded a “word of caution” that budget challenges could be resolved by “further, additional” audits. He said: “This is probably the most scrutinised part of this council’s activities. There is only so far you can go by offloading responsibility.
“We know the answer on HST – it’s absolutely crystal clear. It is the number of children who have in the past been identified as meeting the threshold of additional, very costly transport support.”
Cllr Love said that a recent study on HST showed that while some local authorities pay slightly less, others such as Surrey and West Sussex pay considerably more per capita. He said the KCC costs were also driven by the “extraordinarily and unexpectedly high” number of children with educational health care plans.
Cllr Ros Binks said that the problem starts when the initial assessments are made, which ultimately dictates whether children are eligible for transport help.
Cllr Hook said he agreed “in principle” to Cllr Brazier’s call for an audit.
He added: “It may well do no harm at all to have an independent set of eyes look at how our £60m HST is being spent because even a small percentage saving would be a significant real-term saving.”