Home to school transport consultation 2016
| Purpose | The county council continues to face an unprecedented financial challenge. Over the next five years to 2020/21 the council needs to make savings of £262m on top of those agreed within previous budget processes. This extremely difficult financial picture is the result of continued cuts in funding by Government, rising costs and rising demand for key services. Based on current spending and forecast demand for services, the council will not have sufficient financial resources to meet its statutory obligations by April 2018, even if we no longer continue to deliver any of the non-statutory services. The council will need to rely heavily on reserves in order to set a balanced budget for 2016/17 and 2017/18. We currently spend £8.5m on providing mainstream home to school transport and we will continue to provide free home to school transport, which is our legal duty, in the following cases: · For children aged between 4 and 16 years attending their nearest school and where the suitable walking route from home to school is over 2 miles for children under eight years old and over 3 miles for children aged eight years and above. · For children with a special educational need, a disability or a mobility difficulty, either long term or temporary, which means they cannot be expected to walk , accompanied as necessary, to the nearest appropriate school, even if this is within the statutory walking distance. · For children from low-income families who are: between the ages of 8 and 11 where the nearest school is over 2 miles from their home; between the ages of 11 and 16 where any one of the three nearest schools is between 2 and 6 miles from their home; and between the ages of 11 and 16 where the nearest school preferred on the parental religion or belief is between 2 and 15 miles from home. Low-income families are those pupils whose parents or in receipt of the maximum amount of working tax credit or the pupils are eligible for free school meals. However, of the £8.5m we spend on home to school transport, £1.1m is spent providing home to school transport we have no legal duty to provide. This money is spent on subsidising transport for pupils who attend their nearest faith school but live closer to an available non-faith school. From 1 September 2016, the county council is proposing to stop providing this £1.1m funding. In this consultation we would like to know how stopping the funding to subsidise home to school transport for pupils who attend their nearest faith school but live closer to an available non-faith school will impact on you. |
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| Subject |
Other topic |
| Commissioned by | Pupil Access |
| Geographic area |
All of Lancashire |
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| Method |
Questionnaire - online |
| Consultation with |
Service users |
| Date | 22/02/2016 - 10/04/2016 |
| Undertaken by | Business Intelligence |
Contact information
For more information about this research contact:
0300 123 6701
Email: haveyoursay@lancashire.gov.uk