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

16 Recommendations

15 Conclusions

1 Report

1 Oral session

3 Letters

1 Event

Activity timeline 5 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

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	Responded

Recommendations & Conclusions

2 results

1 Conclusion Acknowledged

70th Report - Home-to-school trans…

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

On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Department for Education (the Department) and from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) on home to school transport in England.1 … Read more

Government Response

The government acknowledges the committee's concerns regarding home to school transport and highlights reforms set out in SEND Reform: Putting Children and Young People First to create a more inclusive school system.

HM Treasury

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13 Conclusion Acknowledged

70th Report - Home-to-school trans…

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

In the academic year 2023/24, around one in five children of compulsory school age in England missed a day or more of school per fortnight – and around one in three at sixth form age.28 Government data from November 2025 … Read more

Government Response

The government agrees on the importance of tackling school absence, provides data indicating transport is a modest factor, and states it is exploring how to better understand the relationship between attendance and transport through existing data and qualitative insight. However, it deems extensive piloting disproportionate and acknowledges limited evidence on post-16 transport's impact on attendance or NEET figures, while reiterating existing local authority duties.

HM Treasury

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Government Response AI assessment · 31 of 16 classified

Accepted 26

Accepted in Part 2

Acknowledged 2

Deferred 1

Total 16 recs + 15 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