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

4 results

3 Recommendation Accepted

70th Report - Home-to-school trans…

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

The Department does not yet have the data it needs to oversee home to school transport effectively. Though local authorities have submitted spending data on home to school transport for many years, the Department has only recently started to collect … Read more

Government Response

The Department for Education has sent a separate letter setting out its plans for improving data quality and making the data collection mandatory, alongside the publication of this Treasury Minute.

HM Treasury

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4 Recommendation Accepted

70th Report - Home-to-school trans…

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

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has now set out the detail of its new funding formula for home to school transport but not yet set out its plans for monitoring whether it proves to be successful in … Read more

Government Response

The government will update needs formulas used to calculate local authority funding allocations through the Local Government Finance Settlement 2026-27 to 2028-29. The Department for Education will appraise the HTST Relative Needs Formula ahead of the next multi-year Local Government Finance Settlement from 2029-30.

HM Treasury

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5 Recommendation Accepted

70th Report - Home-to-school trans…

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

While the Government has now announced plans to write off 90% of the historic deficit from SEND overspending, the plan for deficits arising from now until March 2028 remains unclear. Funding for SEND- related high-needs spending has not kept pace … Read more While the Government has now announced plans to write off 90% of the historic deficit from SEND overspending, the plan for deficits arising from now until March 2028 remains unclear. Funding for SEND- related high-needs spending has not kept pace with demand over the past decade, and local authority cumulative SEND deficits are projected to exceed £5 billion by the end of March 2026. In the November 2025 4 Budget, the Government announced that from 2028–29, it would meet SEND costs from central departmental budgets. In June 2025, Government extended the statutory override—the mechanism that has allowed local authorities to keep existing SEND high-needs deficits off council budgets— until March 2028. Acknowledging them as a shared responsibility between central and local government, in February 2026 MHCLG announced that all local authorities would be eligible to receive a grant covering 90% of historic deficits up to the end of 2025–26, subject to the Department for Education’s approval of a local authority SEND reform plan. MHCLG has not yet said what level of support it will offer on deficits arising from overspending which occurs from now to March 2028 or what, if any, support it will give to local authorities that avoided running up SEND deficits by making cuts to other services. While new funding arrangements will address SEND cost pressures for local authorities from 2028–29, they do not cover associated home to school transport costs, which will continue to put pressure on local authority budgets. recommendation a. MHCLG should, at the earliest opportunity, clarify the level of support it will provide to local authorities with ongoing deficits from overspending on high-needs budgets. b. MHCLG should explain the basis on which it will decide to write off historic deficits and how this will work in practice including what, if any, support it will give to local authorities that avoided running up SEND deficits by making cuts to other services. Show less

Government Response

The government confirmed the first phase of support for SEND deficits, addressing historic High Needs-related deficits accrued up to the end of 2025-26, with the High Needs Stability Grant covering 90% of High Needs-related SEND deficit. The government will confirm the detail on further support for deficits arising in 2026-27 and 2027-28 before the Statutory Override ends in March 2028.

HM Treasury

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6 Recommendation Accepted

70th Report - Home-to-school trans…

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

Better local transport options and an integrated approach to education and transport planning, would reduce home to school transport costs, particularly in the most rural settings. The ongoing decline of bus services, particularly in rural areas, is a long-standing concern … Read more

Government Response

The government agrees with the recommendation and will work with DfT to ensure transport to schools is considered in guidance supporting the Bus Services Act 2025. DfE has worked with DfT to ensure that Better Connected takes account of transport to schools and education settings.

HM Treasury

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Government Response AI assessment · 6 of 5 classified

Accepted 4

Accepted in Part 1

Acknowledged 1

Total 5 recs + 26 conclusions

Correspondence 3 letters

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

Parliament page

8 Jan 2026 To committee Letter from the LGA Children, Young People and Families Committee Chair relating to her appearance before the Committee on its Home-to-school transport evidence session on 08 December 2025, 12 December 2025

Parliament page

15 Dec 2025 To committee Letter from the Director General for Schools Group at the Department for Education relating to a follow-up to the Committee’s evidence session on Home-to-school transport on 08 December 2025, 10 December 2025

Parliament page