ROUND THE COUNCILS KENT:
IN-HOUSE SCHOOL TAXI SERVICE CALLS
The soaring cost of providing cabs to school children could be slashed by Kent County Council (KCC) taking the services in-house. Authority leaders are facing suggestions KCC could operate its own pupil taxi service to make financial efficiencies. In January, KCC reported in budget papers that the net cost of supporting Home to School Transport (HST) was £68.8 million but the costs look set to rise. More than 6,000 children with special educational needs (SEN) in Kent are given free taxis to classes. KCC, as a result of squeezed budgets and spiralling costs, faces having to find tens of millions of pounds in savings in the next financial year over and above those being sought this year. Cllr Antony Hook (Lib Dem) asked if KCC should look at bringing the cab and minibus provision in-house. But cabinet member for education, Cllr Rory Love (Con), said that it was “highly unlikely”. In recent years, cab firms have reported difficulties in recruiting drivers, especially after the pandemic, and problems in would-be cabbies obtaining licences. He told the scrutiny committee at County Hall on Wednesday 1 November: “We don’t want to get into running taxi companies and, if we did, we would be looking for the same drivers. “The other opportunity is for schools to run their own transport services and where that has been trialled it has been quite beneficial. Scaling it up is always going to be one of the difficulties.” KCC has reported HST costs for SEN pupils between July 2022-23 rocketed by £15m. That spend was driven by a near 11% (668) rise in the number of SEN children being carried by cab. KCC documents add: “Given the limited number of school days per year, this means that the increase in the average cost per day drives 67% of the total spend increase compared to 33% from the increase in the number of clients.” The papers add: “Also, there is a significant requirement to improve our commissioning and procurement practice for SEN transport, better scaling contracts so that they benefit from greater resilience and reduced costs.” Cllr Hook said in-house drivers could be used not just for school runs but for other KCC services too.
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He said: “The cost of HST is huge and it is right that we should look for ways of bringing this in-house. There is no reason why we cannot have our own team of drivers who could be deployed doing other things. It must be worth looking at, surely.” Earlier this year, KCC faced fury from families over plans to end no-cost travel to SEN children over the age of 16 and with educational health care plans (EHCPs) in a bid to shave £700,000 off budgets. Parents criticised the proposals, saying they faced having to shell out £500 for taxis their children had been taking to attend class.
SLOUGH: LICENSING RESTRICTIONS RELAXED
Slough Borough Council has agreed a relaxation of taxi licensing restrictions in an effort to aid the town’s ailing private hire industry. The current policy was created to improve the quality of the private hire and hackney carriage fleet, with an emphasis placed on licensing vehicles that emit fewer emissions in line with the council’s commitment to improve air quality in Slough. However, this policy has greatly reduced the number of new private hire vehicle licences granted and has been a significant barrier to entering the licensed trade for new driver applicants. The cost-of-living crisis has further exacerbated the problem. The licensed trade has suffered due to lost income, a decline in Slough’s night-time economy, vehicle supply issues and rising costs of both fuel and vehicles. Since 2018, there has been an approximately 50 per cent reduction in the number of private hire vehicles licensed by the council. The current fleet of licensed vehicles has been reviewed and it has been decided that meeting the ultra low emmission vehicle standard by 31 December 2025 is not achievable and it would place an unreasonable financial burden onto the licensed trade.
Additionally, the requirement to only license a vehicle that is less than three years’ old is cost prohibitive. At a Licensing Committee meeting on Monday 30 October, councillors resolved to delay a ban on licensing new diesel vehicles until 1st January 2026 and petrol vehicles until 1st January 2027. A further measure meant vehicles would need to be less than five years old when first licensed.
DECEMBER 2023 PHTM
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