Proposed changes to the School Transport and Post-16 Transport services

We are considering making four changes that would apply to both the School Transport service and the Post-16 Transport service:

• Proposal One:
  To reduce the number of unused seats by utilising bus pass usage data.
  Find out more about Proposal One
• Proposal Two:
  To increase flexibility to meet short-term variations in demand by using the full licensed capacity of buses.
  Find out more about Proposal Two
• Proposal Three:
  To make discretionary transport more viable by asking parents to increase their financial contribution to the cost of the transport.
  Find out more about Proposal Three
• Proposal Four:
  To promote the most independent forms of transport assistance by prioritising a Public Transport Season Ticket or Personal Transport Budget over contracted transport, where this is appropriate and more cost effective.
  Find out more about Proposal Four

Should the proposals be approved, Hampshire County Council would update the School Transport Policy to reflect the changes. The proposed wording can be found in Appendix B of the Information Pack.

Exceptional cases and the right to appeal

There is an existing mechanism in place for the School Transport service to consider whether in exceptional cases transport can be granted as an exception to policy. There is also a statutory right to appeal for any family who wishes to challenge a transport entitlement decision. This right of appeal covers decisions on whether a child is entitled to transport, and on the form of assistance offered.

About the School Transport service

The County Council currently arranges daily transport to school for almost 13,900 children and young people. Of these, approximately 9,720 attend mainstream school places and around 4,150 attend places that provide for their special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or other needs.

For more information on the service, including the application process and eligibility criteria, visit our School Transport service pages.

The County Council is required by law to provide school transport, free of charge, to all children and young people of compulsory school age that meet the nationally set distance criteria, where any of the following apply:

• The child is of compulsory school age but is under eight years old, and they attend the nearest catchment school or one that is nearer to their home, and the shortest available walking route is more than two miles
• The child or young person is eight years old or over, but not above compulsory school age, and they attend the nearest catchment school or one that is nearer to their home, where the shortest available walking route is more than three miles (this is reduced to more than two miles if the child or young person meets low-income criteria)
• Parents apply for a place at the designated catchment school and a place is not available (in this situation, School Transport assistance would be offered to the next closest school with an available place if the walking distance criteria above are met
• The walking route to school is classified as an ‘unsafe walking route’
• The child or young person has SEND and meets the distance criteria described above for School Transport. This also applies where, for reasons of their Special Educational Needs, disabilities or mobility problems, such children and young people cannot reasonably be expected to walk to their nearest suitable school.

Children and young people are of compulsory school age from the beginning of the term following their fifth birthday (or from their fifth birthday if it falls on 31 August, 31 December or 31 March) until the last Friday in June of the academic year in which they reach 16 years of age.

See the current School Transport Policy (2024) for further information.

About the Post-16 Transport service

See the current Post-16 Transport Policy for further information.

What are the alternatives?

There are other approaches that we could take that are not proposed at this time. In developing this proposal, we have also considered the following:

Using manual audits to measure vehicle occupancy

An alternative method of improving utilisation of vehicles would be to undertake further manual audits to establish an average occupancy of vehicles, and to allocate additional students to routes based on these observations. However, this is not being considered at this time because:

• audits would only provide a snapshot in time, whereas the use of digital data would allow the service to identify trends across the week, month or year
• estimates would not be up to date, which could lead to higher demand for seats than those available
• audits would be less cost effective than using digital bus pass data, as they would require significant resources to complete

Maintaining the current approaches to providing School Transport and Post-16 Transport

This option is not being proposed because of the scale of the budget pressures faced by the County Council, and the legal requirement to operate within budget. Hampshire County Council also has a duty to promote the use of sustainable travel. For bus journeys, this could include using seats more efficiently leading to fewer journeys, or smaller vehicles, being needed.