UK Inquiry Tracker

Home-to-school transport

Public Accounts Committee Open Inquiry

Opened: 10 Jul 2025 Parliament page

Many children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) must travel long distances to schools that can meet their needs. The PAC’s January 2025 report on support for children and young people with special educational needs noted that a lack of state school capacity for children with … Read more Many children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) must travel long distances to schools that can meet their needs. The PAC’s January 2025 report on support for children and young people with special educational needs noted that a lack of state school capacity for children with SEND was contributing to larger SEND transport spending as more children travel longer distances to suitable schools. The report found that home to school transport has seen a 77% real terms cost increase since 2015. Local authority spending on transport reached £2.3bn in 2023-24. The PAC called on government to improve its data on home-to-school transport and to ensure spending on it provided value for money, and a data collection exercise on home-to-school transport was launched in response . The PAC’s June 2025 report on local government financial sustainability laid out the pressure that increased demand for SEND provision was having on local authority budgets. The report warned that SEND spending has outstripped the money available from central government to pay for it, with local authority deficits expected to hit up to £3.9bn a year by the end of 2027-28. Following the PAC’s report, government announced that it would be extending the accounting workaround keeping high needs spending off local authorities’ balance sheets by a further two years. The National Audit Office reports in 2025 on home to school transport , in a study considering the commissioning of, and spending on, transport by local authorities in England. Following the NAO’s report, the PAC will conduct its own scrutiny with evidence from senior Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Department for Education officials, and others. Likely topics for scrutiny include: How to manage rising demand; Available support for young people; and Efforts to contain costs. If you have evidence on these issues, please submit here by 23:59 on Monday 24 November 2025. Please look at the requirements for written evidence submissions and note that the Committee cannot accept material as evidence that is published elsewhere. You can request anonymity or confidentiality when you send evidence, but it is the Committee which decides what information to publish and how. It may treat submissions confidentially, even where you have not requested this. Please note that the Committee’s inquiry cannot assist with individual cases. If you need help with an individual problem you are having, you may wish to read the information on Parliament’s website about who you can contact with different issues . Show less

5 Recommendations

26 Conclusions

1 Report

1 Oral session

3 Letters

1 Event

Activity timeline 6 events

14 May
2026

Correspondence

Letter from the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education relating to Home-to-school travel data collection, 30 April 2026

6 Mar
2026

Report published

70th Report - Home-to-school transport

8 Jan
2026

Correspondence

Letter from the LGA Children, Young People and Families Committee Chair relating to her appearance before the Committee on its Home-to-scho…

15 Dec
2025

Correspondence

Letter from the Director General for Schools Group at the Department for Education relating to a follow-up to the Committee’s evidence sess…

8 Dec
2025

Oral evidence

Oral evidence session

8 Dec
2025

Formal meeting (oral evidence session) · The Grimond Room, Portcullis House

Committee event

Oral evidence sessions 1 session

8 Dec 2025

View on parliament.uk

Anna Bird · Disabled Children's Partnership Councillor Amanda Hopgood · Local Government Association Juliet Chua CB · Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Nico Heslop · Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government Rose McArthur · ADEPT – Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning & Transport Susan Acland-Hood · The Department for Education

Reports 1 report · click to expand

Title	HC No.	Published	Items	Response
70th Report - Home-to-school transport	HC 1238	6 Mar 2026	31	Overdue

Recommendations & Conclusions

31 results

2 Recommendation Accepted in Part

70th Report - Home-to-school trans…

The Department does not understand how access to transport is affecting attendance, nor how difficult...

The Department does not understand how access to transport is affecting attendance, nor how difficult it is for parents to navigate the system, particularly post-16. While acknowledging that transport is critical to accessing education and training, the Department does not … Read more

Government Response

The government acknowledges the link between absence and distance from school and is exploring how best to understand the relationship between attendance and transport by working with local authorities to consider existing data. Work is underway through the SEND reforms to improve information for parents and young people regarding post-16 transport.

HM Treasury

Home-to-school transport

Activity timeline 6 events

Oral evidence sessions 1 session

Reports 1 report · click to expand

Recommendations & Conclusions

The Department does not understand how access to transport is affecting attendance, nor how difficult...

The Department does not yet have the data it needs to oversee home to school...

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has now set out the detail of...

While the Government has now announced plans to write off 90% of the historic deficit...

Better local transport options and an integrated approach to education and transport planning, would reduce...

On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence...

Following our evidence session in December 2025, on 23 February 2026 the Government announced the...

Following the introduction of the Children and Families Act (CFA), local authority spending on school...

When we asked what local authorities were doing to try to reduce the cost of...

Contact told us that, in its experience, the main way that local authorities had cut...

We questioned the Department about local authority approaches to cost savings and whether all were...

The Department told us that the biggest driver of cost was SEND provision and described...

In the academic year 2023/24, around one in five children of compulsory school age in...

Given that home to school transport policy aims to facilitate attendance, we asked the Department...

Contact explained that the changes in entitlement to transport after age 16 could feel like...

When we asked how hard it was for parents to navigate the legislation, Contact told...

Local authorities have submitted spending data on home to school transport for many years through...

When we asked whether the Department’s data would enable it to capture best practice by...

We suggested that the Department make the data collection mandatory for all local authorities and...

Given its reliance on SEND reform to deliver significant change, we asked the Department if...

In its June 2025 Fair Funding Review, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government...

We asked whether the new formula would take account of the higher costs faced by...

The Department and MHCLG explained that there were different calculations for SEND and mainstream funding...

In December 2025, shortly after our oral evidence session, MHCLG published the provisional local government...

We have previously highlighted how SEND-related funding—the high-needs block of the Dedicated Schools Grant—has not...

We asked about plans for helping local authorities with historic and accruing deficits from now...

In written evidence, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) raised its concerns about...

We have previously raised concerns about the long-term decline of buses, particularly in rural areas.68...

We asked about the role of local bus franchising, under which local authorities decide the...

Several witnesses stressed developing independence as an important part of home to school transport provision,...

The Department told us it was working with DfT on sustainable travel and that supporting...

Government Response AI assessment · 6 of 5 classified

Correspondence 3 letters