Councillor D Davies was asked to consider a report by the Assistant Head of Education (Resources) on Post-16 Home to School Transport Costs for students in Newport. The report considers transport costs for the period from January 2025 to July 2025.

Post-16 Home to School Transport Costs

The report proposes increasing charges for pupils who use contracted transport services to get to school, and for pupils who purchase concessionary seats on those services, from January 2025.

The report explains that the council currently provides a discretionary travel grant of £150 to students who meet the eligibility criteria, with pupils free to use the grant at their discretion. The report proposes that the grant continue.

The provision of Post-16 Home to School Transport is not a statutory responsibility, and Local Authorities have discretion to consider whether to make such provision, and if so, to what value. This Council’s current policy provides an annual discretionary travel grant of £150 to those students who meet the agreed eligibility criteria, but the way in which this is used is at the discretion of individual learners. Parental contributions are therefore required to meet any shortfall in a learner’s actual annual travel costs.

Since 2015, the contribution required from parents / carers of Post-16 learners using contracted home-to-school transport to get to and from school has been fixed at £370. The actual cost of this provision is significantly higher however and therefore the Council is in effect subsidising a discretionary service.

Whilst this proposal seeks to continue these arrangements, it is recommended that the current parental contribution is increased by 5% from January 2025 in line with cost inflation on contracts. This will result in parental contributions increasing from £370 to £388.50 per learner per academic year. Many contributions are collected by direct debit, and therefore these costs would increase from £33.63 to £35.32 from January 2025 (based on 11 equal monthly instalments). For the period running from January to July 2025, it is estimated that this increase could reduce the Council’s subsidy on this service by approximately £30k.

The report sets out four options: retaining the current charges; aligning charges for users of contracted services with those for students who use the local bus network; increasing charges by 5% in line with inflation; and setting different charges for each school based on the actual cost of provision.

The report identifies a number of risks associated with increasing charges, including the possibility of complaints from parents, the risk of the council being accused of failing to treat students equitably, the continuation of a subsidy for a discretionary service, and the risk of reducing applications for Post-16 and concessionary places.

The report concludes that the preferred option is to increase charges and reduce the council's subsidy. The report argues an increase is justified by the fact that the council has not increased the charges since 2015.

The report goes on to explain that if approved, the decision will be shared with stakeholders by the Head of Infrastructure.