Agenda item - Home to School Transport

Agenda item

Home to School Transport

Report attached.

Decision:

Report: Cabinet approval of the Home to School Transport Policy

Presented by: Councillor Oscar Ford, Cabinet Member for Children & Young People

Cabinet Agreed:

1. To quash the decision, it made at its meeting on 15 May to approve the Home to School Transport Policy

2. To conscientiously consider the further representations that have been received in the additional consultation exercise described in the report.

3. To take a fresh decision based on the totality of the consultation responses set out in this and the previous report.

4. To adopt the revised Home to School Transport policy attached at appendix A of the Cabinet report.

5. To not introduce a charge for Post 16 Travel at this time.

Minutes:

Report: Cabinet approval of the Home to School Transport Policy

Presented by: Councillor Oscar Ford, Cabinet Member for Children & Young People

Summary:

The Department for Education (DfE) recently updated the statutory guidance replacing the previous Home to School Travel and Transport guidance from 2014. As a result changes to Havering’s Policy were to fall in line with the new statutory guidance.

In response to the changes to the government guidance, Havering Council undertook a consultation on a new Home to School Transport policy. There was a good response rate to the consultation made over the statutory consultation period with a total of 575 individuals responding.

The new Home to School Transport policy was presented to Cabinet in May where it was agreed and endorsed based on the understanding everyone had been consulted with.

It was later discovered that a cohort of schools had not been included within the consultation. These were schools where parents were taking their children to school and reclaiming a fuel reimbursement.

There were 16 schools that had been omitted from the previous consultation due to internal systems recorded these recipients in a different database and were overlooked.

Parents and Carers brought these flaws in the consultation process to officers attention and the service has addressed these concerns.

A repeat of the consultation was undertaken with out of borough schools that supported Havering children and not just the 16 omitted schools from the initial consultation.

The consultation was carried out between 15 June 2024 and 14 July 2024. A total of 79 email invitations went out to individual schools and they were given 28 days to respond to the questionnaire of the consultation.

The consultation resulted in receiving 5 responses from the 79 invites a response of 6.3%

The consultation now shows overall 580 responses with the vast majority were from Parents/Guardians accounting for 82 % of the responses, followed by school or educational settings at 7%, the general public at 4% and children under 16 offering a 3.5% contribution.