Post 16 Home To School Travel Cuts in Bristol Come as Young People Struggle to Access Post 16 Education
Efficiencies, Improvements, Demand Management – These are a few of our favourite things to look forward to with post-16 transport cuts
On Friday 29 August 2025, Bristol Live Journalist Tristan Cork, posted a long-read thread on X about attempting to get a bus in Bristol.
A family member had asked him for some support testing out a bus route which they were unfamiliar with in preparation for a new job.
The thread is absolutely worth reading because it highlights the farcical hot mess people attempting to navigate Bristol on buses have to face.
He says in one post: ‘The issue, again, is that First run the buses, the council don’t run the buses but run the roads, TravelWest run the bus stops, WECA fund a lot but a succession of now three metro mayors have done nothing to sort this fracture out.’
Most importantly, he concludes: ‘What happened might seem trivial, but these things matter. Similar things happened all over the city this week: people late for work, left stranded, misinformed, inconvenienced, missing GP appointments, job interviews, left basically giving up trying to get around the city.’
It was a very timely account. The day before, a meeting of Children and Young People Policy Committee was held at the council house.
On the agenda were two inextricably linked items that affect children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (Send) in Bristol.
Agenda Item 9 was a NEET Reduction and Youth Guarantee Report. Agenda Item 10 was the Home to School Travel Phase 2 Business Case.
The second paper was asking for approval to draw down £523,000 of Transformation Reserve funding to push ahead with planned cuts and efficiencies to the service.
The Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) for this second paper stated: ‘Reducing non-statutory support for this group could also potentially reduce the number of CYP with SEND accessing post-16 courses and reduce employment opportunities.’
The mitigation for this was an Independent Travel Training Programme to support those young people in ‘becoming more independent which, in time, will have greater and longer-term health and well-being benefits.’
The main paper to the report went into the ‘demand management’ action to ‘achieve strategic aims’.
What that means in this context is the cuts to post-16 Home To School Travel. And, it has been directly noted in the EQIA paper as an issue.
The Post-16 Policy on the paper states:
‘Implement changes to the post-16 policy in a phased manner, supporting families during this transition period with a range of travel support options, including referral to the Independent Travel Training programme for some children and young people where appropriate.’
Basically, it boils down to no taxi transport to post-16 education settings.
The problem with this policy is that Bristol City Council maintains Education Health Care Plans (EHCP). The legal document contains identified need and provision that will be met by an identified setting – or in some cases Education Other Than At School (EOTAS).
This has caused confusion and upset. If a post-16 setting that can meet need is a significant distance away and cannot be reasonably accessed by public transport, how can it be named on an EHCP? How can a setting be named if to get transport will mean an appeal process with no guarantee of it being given at the end?
It’s questions Bristol families have been asking themselves since the new policy was originally proposed.
The previous agenda item NEET Reduction and Youth Guarantee Report, was presented by Head of Employment, Skills and Lifelong Learning, Jane Taylor.
The agenda item papers delved into the statistics and findings around the city’s NEET numbers.
NEET stands for Not in Education, Employment, or Training, and refers to young people aged 16 -24 – particularly from post-16.
In the meeting, Jane Taylor said: “We’ve got the perennial issue of transport in the city which is expensive and inconsistent for young people and they also many young people lack the confidence to travel outside their immediate locality and we know about the financial pressures that many families face.”
Taylor also said that there was “inconsistent inclusive practice in some of our settings.”
In the paper, the issues impacting young people classed as NEET were analysed by the Post 16 Team. Some of the facts behind what the team say is causing a ‘spike in NEET’ includes:
- Lack of early intervention and prevention of NEET – across our schools and settings, there is evidence of inconsistent inclusive practice and insufficient targeted interventions and/or transition support for young people most at risk of becoming NEET. Early in the year, in some local colleges, there was a sudden increase of 16-17 young people who left their post 16 study programmes early.
- Lack of sufficient Post 16 provision – there is inadequate entry and Level 1 post 16 provision available in key localities, including roll on roll off
programmes for those that become NEET. There is also a lack of specialist provision for priority cohorts – for example ESOL provision for unaccompanied children in care from migrant communities who are seeking asylum in the UK. - Travel barriers – young people are impacted by inadequate and expensive public transport, particularly those living in peripheral areas of Bristol. This is exacerbated by a lack of confidence in travelling outside of familiar areas with a need for more systematic travel incentives and training.
But how does this impact post-16 transport and Send?
The first issue is a lack of inclusion at some colleges. This would mean that local settings would be unlikely to meet the needs of significant numbers of young people with complex needs. These are the settings that post 16 pupils in Bristol with Send would likely find the most easily reachable on public transport.
The second issue is that ‘travel barriers’ have already been identified as an issue to attending post-16 education in general.
Thirdly, there is already a ‘lack’ of post 16 provision. It has also been identified that there is ‘inadequate entry and Level 1 post 16 provision available in key localities.’ This is a fundamentally important issue because Level 1 post 16 courses are vitally important for young people who need to take alternative routes through their education.
Bristol City Council has been pushing its Independent Travel Training programme hard as a way of solving the costs on Send transport.
The training does include – What to do in an emergency and how to travel to increase social, education and work opportunities. However, it would be an impressive programme to anticipate the litany of disasters that Tristan Cork experienced trying to catch a bus.
And for those who need to use the train, best of luck to the Hunger Games that is Great Western Railway. Cancellations, platform alterations, huge steps up and down to the train, two carriages for 600 people, Bristol Temple Meads peak time and the old game of Train Now Going To Cardiff Without Telling The Boarded Passengers Expecting To Go To Avonmouth.
The Independent Travel Training programme is going to become ‘widely available’ as post-16 transport is widely removed from vulnerable young people.
We looked into some of the statistics in the appendix papers that went to the meeting here: https://chopsybaby.com/magazine/council-cuts-to-send-transport-will-affect-post-16-education-access/
Who said what at Children and Young People Policy Committee on Thursday 28 August 2025
Head of Children’s Commissioning, Gail Rogers presented the report. She said: “So the paper’s seeking approval to draw down £523,000 of Transformation Reserve funding to be used in phase two of the Home To School Travel Service in developing more value for money travel options. So this comes about because numbers of children eligible for this statutory service have been growing steadily due to the increase of young people with EHCP [Education Health Care Plans] primarily.
“Alongside this, the annual spend then on Home To School Travel continues to grow and linked very often with travel out of area where children are needing to go out of Bristol to access a setting and therefore costs are a little higher.
“So investment in efficiencies, improvements and new services will allow us to deliver a high quality and sustainable service going forwards for some of the most vulnerable children so that we can maintain access to education for all of them.
“We’re setting out three strategic areas of work in our proposals for phase two under the headings – Routing and Costs, Communication and Demand Management and Technology and Systems. And all of those together will help reduce spend whilst improving quality.
“The routine and cost work reduces the overall cost of transporting children and young people from home to school whilst improving quality.
“Communication and demand management will create a more holistic working relationship between home-to-school travel and the Send departments at the council that helps us to better manage demand for for travel.
“And technology and systems introduces new technologies and review systems and processes. So that we can increase our operational efficiency coping with increased demand in the short term and reducing operational costs in the medium term. And then also providing a more responsive and user-friendly service for everyone.
“So the costs of this project over two years are £523,000 and that is planned to be drawn down from the council’s existing Transformation Reserve.
“Benefits of the project in terms of monetary value are projected to deliver a total of £733,000 over three years ending in 2027/28.
“The approved budget that we’ve got for this year includes savings of £130,000 that are associated with existing planned changes to the service and then in addition we have got £620,000 that had been under achieved in 2024/25. So we have got a savings requirement of £750,000 for this year.
“We’ve got a a separate electric vehicle fleet project currently in implementation and that will add significantly to those savings jointly delivering £733,000 in 2025/26.
“So our recommendations are that the committee approves the draw down of the funding from the Transformation Reserve to fund the implementation of phase two of our project. And we also asking to authorise the Executive Director of Children and Education – in consultation with the Chair of the Children Young People’s Committee – to take all steps required to implement the business case – including procuring and awarding contracts over the key decision threshold in line with the maximum budget envelope as outlined in the report.”
Questions were then Invited following the paper briefing
Labour Councillor Kerry Bailes said: “I’ve got just so many questions about every aspect of this. Obviously, I’m a service user. So, this report obviously doesn’t give the full context because it’s a report and you could probably write pages and pages and pages and obviously you can’t submit that to this committee.
“So, I’m just thinking, you know, I’m sure lots of parent carers have also got lots of questions. So, is this something we could have a task and finish group on or something? Because it just seems like a big decision to make without having more information.”
Green Party Chair, Christine Townsend: “It’s the phase two of what we’ve already approved. So, this is the second bit. So, part some of it is about buying more EV fleets. Some of it is about improving the kind of technical interface between families and within the service itself. And if – I need to look at the paper to see what else it was – but there are areas within the service that need to be invested in. This is a one-off piece of investment. And some of it will buy kit and some of it will train staff and some of it will buy EV fleets.
Kerry Bailes said: “I think a lot of that is the questions that that I’ve got in my mind like with the the escort service.”
Christine Townsend said: “Okay, then ask.”
Kerry Bailes said: “Well like you said like training and things like that and there’s just, it seems like a big decision to be making here without looking further into it.
Labour Councillor, Katja Hornchen said: “In fairness, the first time this paper came through, I read through it in detail and I was okay with it. But this has given us a lot more information about what’s actually happening, which presumably you’ve worked out far more since then. That’s obviously the thing.
“I did have a few questions and one of them was I didn’t know what a parent portal was? I had to have that explained. But the second one I had to work on was the escort services, the training of the escort services. Yet they only worked possibly 2 to four hours a day because they’re in the car with the young people. I wasn’t very happy when they said, “Oh, this will be okay for a woman in her ages of 50 to 59.” I was like, “What?”
“And the pay is very low. So that’s one of my real issues about it.
“And with that, how does the training fit into that? If you’re only working that few hours a day, can’t they be used a more rounded job that can do different things as well?
Head of Children’s Commissioning, Gail Rogers said: “So, I could answer that on the training and of the escorts. So we have a lot of uptake of applicants for that and quite often they’re entry level. You know they’re people who maybe it’s like through word of mouth they really want to be working with children, might really want to work with children in Send and get into different careers like that.
“There’s a lot of safeguarding training. There is training communication and support for children with Send needs. Training in health and safety because they’re responsible for that child in those circumstances and the training takes part separately.
“So they are paid separately for the training.
“It it is a term time only role and it is only for the period of time that they’re backwards and forwards. But we have, for example, we have had some of our escorts come across and join us as business support officers and continue their role escorting.
“So I think it’s, you know, it is not a great pay for the role and we probably will look into that. But we are looking to recruit more escorts. We have more children with complex needs. We definitely need escorts to sit with them through the journey and take care of them. And what is happening because we’ve had a scarcity of that. Sometimes we’ve relied on escorts provided by some of the contractors. So we are able to ask for somebody to do the taxi journey and also to provide an escort. And that’s both expensive and not as good quality because they won’t have had the same amount of training as our own escorts.”
Katja Hornchen said: “That was the one issue. The other one is I didn’t actually understand what a parent portal was?”
Gail Rogers said: “So at the moment you understand we would get a huge amount of calls not just from parents actually, from schools, from taxi drivers in the morning with 1,500 children to safely take around the city.
“We will receive lots and lots of calls during the day. And what we want to do is enable a process so that parents can contact us, see where their child is as well through a tracking of the vehicle. So they don’t kind of have to need to ask that and if the vehicle is a little bit late, they will see where it is. Parents just being able to contact us online rather than waiting in a a phone.”
Katja Hornchen said: “Feels like a enclosed Uber. Yes?”
Gail Rogers said: “Yeah. something like that, but also that they can contact us without having to wait on the end of a phone call because the amount of calls that we get every day is a lot and that even though we’ve improved our call handling and our phone system, it’s still not good enough.
Katja Hornchen said: “Okay, I just wanted to know what that was about. And then the other one I wanted to know is if you’ve got a good system of drivers and particularly escorts, which is obviously I can see that’s a really important role. Is there not like a time when they can be met with the parents and the children that’s outside school or outside things so they get used to them?
“I don’t know if this works because I’ve been told that sometimes they just come and then you don’t know who it is but whoever just turns up and it given that a lot of Sen children have a lot of issues with strange grown-ups and strange people. And I know that with other, in school they would meet the TA from the next year if they changed TA and there would be sort of some sort of interaction before they started doing it. And is there not some time for that to do because it just seems like really cutting the costs again on the working people which is rather sad.”
Gail Rogers Said: “So how it works best I suppose is at the beginning of term and at the beginning when we procure a new like journey for a child and put the escort on it, we like we are in contact with parents and carers, let them know who the escort is. The escort does introduce themselves usually beforehand and as far as possible that escort will stay with the child through their journey.
“There obviously are times that has to change and a new person does turn up. But for the most part, we do we fully appreciate that everybody feels a lot better if there’s consistent people on that journey with the child.”
Katja Hornchen said: “Yeah. Okay. And there was some issues around where the meeting times where I’m still concerned about sorry I’m going on here, isn’t any about whether there will be some children that will then not get the service because of trying to cut the systems and trying to get things straight?
“Because I know it’s been a while back that I’ve heard these things, but I have had friends that had not been able to have the service because they had one school and not another. And I’m concerned that whenever we start going, oh, we have to cut costs. We have to cut cost that we start cutting these things or we start accidentally putting children that can’t actually travel for two or three buses to get to a college and it’s not suitable for them.
“They might be able to catch the bus down the road to the shops, but they might not be able to catch a bus and a train to college in Bath, for instance, on their own. This is the post 16 one. And I’m just worried that might get there might be slippage and cost and that we’re not making sure that every child gets what they need and when they need it.”
Gail Rogers said: – “Yeah. So every child is assessed individually uniquely to their needs and that’s a huge amount of the work we do goes into actually contacting parents and carers and getting the right information for them. I think yes, this is about making sure that we are cutting costs and being efficient because the number of children that we are helping is going up and so what we are obviously looking to run this as efficiently as possible.
“We’re not looking to run it in a way though that means that we are limiting what we deliver for young people because this service is a statutory duty. We have to deliver it and where children are eligible we deliver that service in the most cost-effective way, because the money is obviously public money but also, you know, aligned with the way that best meets the needs of that child.
“We are introducing, we have got travel trainers and they are supporting young people at the moment. There’s three I think training, but there will be 20 a month going through to travel independently. But those referrals are largely coming from parents and from schools. So we are actually not sort of asking anyone to take buses where they might not be able to do that.”
Katja Hornchen said: “Because I can see that from a parents perspective. I can see that’s really important, because if you have to keep taking your child to school and that’s not just my experience but experience of friends of mine that have had children, basically they can’t work because that’s what their whole lives become. And so this has a knock-on effect on other things in society as well. Makes families poorer which then brings in more services. There’s a mental health condition. In one case it was a serious mental health condition because that the stress of its attitude I should say. So yes there will be that is it’s very concerning. It’s a really important piece of work but yeah anyway that’s was my questions.
Green Councillor Cara Lavan said: “I saw there was a public consultation around the changes. So can you give a brief overview of who was included in that consultation?”
Gail Rogers said: “Yeah. So letters went out to all current users of this, of our service. So they had letters and we also tried to contact everybody on email but not everybody obviously picks up on email. So everybody had a letter. It was on the Local Offer kind of all the usual places really.
“We worked with our consultation team to do that and we actually had 330 odd replies I think. But with only something like 170 were people within the Bristol City Council boundary.”
Kerry Bailes said: “So, I’ve got a few questions and comments. So I agree that phoning up the council when you do or don’t need a taxi doesn’t work because quite often the message doesn’t always get through to the taxi driver and then they turn up and then it just causes an absolute kerfuffle. And then sometimes the taxi drivers, you can phone them and say actually I don’t need it. So, it’s just a lot of work for everybody. So, that system really doesn’t work.
“So I welcome the the portal, but I’d be interested to see what that looks like and how it’s going to be monitored.
“And also I’ve had a lot of taxi drivers and I speak to them build a good rapport. A lot of them are private hire taxis. So they do the school run in the morning and afternoon and then they go out and do their normal job in in the daytime. So, what will these taxis be doing in the daytime when they’re not being home to school transport?
“And with the pickup points, I know that sometimes does happen already. So I’m not saying it’s not a good idea, but I’m concerned about things like reasonable adjustments.
“So, you know, I live in a a very big ward and if you’ve got three kids that need to be in the same taxi and they live at opposite ends of the ward and the meeting points in the middle and one of those children can’t get to the meeting point, then that becomes a barrier. So, you know, you’re always going to have reasonable adjustments. That policy might not work for everybody.
“With the tracking system has there been any conversation with parents and families and what have they said about that and do they want it? Is that something they’ve suggested or agreed to or do they do they like being being tracked?”
Gail Rogers said: – “So the tracking is of the vehicle. So it’s not of children unless children are in that vehicle and then it’s really to give – so we will often maybe because of traffic we will often have a lot of calls to say my taxi hasn’t arrived yet or have you know when is it my child’s getting distressed. And that tracking on a vehicle allows you to see where the vehicle is and that it’s on its way. It’s kind of bit like a parcel tracking that we sort of all do now.
“And then I suppose if there are some parents are more anxious than others in terms of whether their child has got to school and you will see whether the vehicle has got to school that doesn’t necessarily I guess you know your child is likely to be there if the vehicle has got there. Because they will have been helped off that vehicle but it isn’t tracking of the children.
“I think there has been consultation with the contractors, our drivers and all the rest of it over how we would introduce that. And we have, I don’t think we have consulted with parents and carers specifically about that. It was, whether it was in the original consultation I don’t remember this.
“And I really take your point about like more information and how parents and carers can be involved in this and like really key to this and in some of the report you would see that phase two of this programme, we really want to have Bristol Parent Carers supporting this programme by being on the programme board with us offering, challenge offering you know the best way of being able to get that feedback and understanding of the needs of our parent carers and their children in Bristol.
“So I think you know we might not have it all spot on and perfect at the moment but this programme of work, much of which has already started, is beginning to make some impacts like the fleet for example that we have got is decarbonising the city and journeys for children.
“We have done a consultation with the families where they are using one of our fleet vehicles rather than the previous taxi and they’re really happy with it. They’re really happy with I guess the fact that the drivers are employed as well by the council rather than being a contractor.
“There’s, so you know, I think there’s probably is a lot more that we can do to make assurances and to also learn from some of the the things that you haven’t had such a good experience of. But this whole program isn’t about disadvantaging children or trying to, you know, cut costs to the point that children aren’t getting a service.
“We want children to go to school. You we had Jane [refers to NEET agenda item] talking just now. We need to help children to maintain that access to school so that their futures look brighter and we know how hard it is as well for we like we’re talking to parent carers every single day.
“We know how hard it is some of their lives are with, you know, other children and dealing with a high need child. We really want to support that to go as well as possible. So this is not about trying to reduce a service.”
Kerry Bailes said: “So going back to the the parent portal thing. So would that also incorporate the forms you fill out to apply for the home to, because I know they’re they’re a bit of a nightmare. They’re hard to find and sometimes you sent them and sometimes you’re not. And when you fill it out, you get tick boxes to say your what eligility criteria. And last time I filled it in and I was getting other parents to fill it in, you couldn’t tick them all.
“So if you were entitled to them all, you couldn’t tick them all. So sometimes your initial application could get rejected when you know you are entitled. So, would it incorporate that and would it speed things up? Because I think last year we were told like three days before the beginning of the new term what the arrangements were and that just sent my family into absolute panic. So, is this going to improve things?”
Gail Rogers said: “So largely that’s what the improvements in technology and our systems are about is about improving our service.
“It’s actually going to cost us money, not save us money, but what it will deliver is a huge benefit to children and families and for the service. So I’m not sure that the, we use an online form at the moment, don’t we, for the referral and it’s on our portal.
“It’s one of the things that’s there’s a improving technologies programme going on in the council at the moment and we absolutely need to improve that if we can get all of that process on our current system which our case management system we would do that. But I’m not sure that we can, so I think we’ll need a slightly separate process for that
“But I really agree we need an end to end process that you would have, wouldn’t you, if you were a blooming, uh I don’t know something in Google, you would have something where you could apply, it went through, you could track where you were, which that would be perfect. So parents don’t think they’ve been forgotten.
“And we do, like we have so many applications at the beginning of a school term that we often do. Some parents are waiting until the week before and there are also some parents, I’m sad to say, who haven’t heard what you know but by the beginning of term. And that’s been the case this year for the academic term.
“We have written to all of them to say that we will honour mileage payments until their referral is processed and we have also sort of routed their children upfront on the assumption that most of them will probably be eligible so that when we have processed it, it will be swift.”
Kerry Bailes said: – “You said that parents would be reimbursed for mileage but if you don’t drive would if we had to arrange our own taxis we would still get?”
Gail Rogers said: “Yeah. But we haven’t heard that from anybody yet. So, so far we have had feedback from parents saying, “Thank you for that. That’s fine. We acknowledge that.” And we haven’t had any of those parents come to us yet.”
Councillor Andrew Varney said: “I think you might have missed one of Councillor Bailes’ questions or maybe I missed it. It was about our own fleet and what that fleet would be doing once they finished their home to school service. Now, we had a briefing a while ago and I think you told me that it could be, for example, used for meals on wheels. I’d be interested to know if there are other ideas of how that fleet could be maximised during the day.
“I just had really one sort of simple point to make is this is a statutory service. It’s not being funded properly from central government. So, we do need to find ways to be efficient and to make cost savings.
“For me, this seems like a no-brainer. you know, for a small investment, we’re going to make savings and and actually improve the service from from my understanding. But yes, if you just wanted to refer back to the earlier question, that’d be great.”
Gail Rogers said:– “Thanks for reminding me. Yeah, because actually that’s a really good news story. So, we’ll go up to 33 vehicles and we have already taken on the Meals on Wheels contract. So, because that’s outside of school time. So we start running that from the beginning of October, I think. And then we are looking across the council first of all around where there’s quite a lot of taxi spend actually across the whole council and whether there are opportunities.
“We have a booking form now internally where people can request a vehicle outside of those times obviously and then we would match it where we can. That’s pretty well only going to work for planned journeys I suspect. So we are still exploring that but we expect income from fleet to actually be a significant part of our savings and what we’re able to put back into the service.”
Councillor Andrew Varney said: “One idea I just suddenly thought of which probably you’ve already thought of anyway is sometimes on planning meetings we have to make site visits and we require visit vehicle for that. Also with licensing as well we do occasionally do site visits. So that could be a potential use for our own fleet.”
Councillor Christine Townsend said: “I do want to iterate this is an investment is an investor to save. And the savings that are outlined in this were in the Medium Term Financial Plan that were passed at budget by Full Council. So what we’re at doing with this is bringing through that that’s already gone through the sort of committees higher up than us, I suppose, might be a way to kind of describe to describe it.”
When it came to the vote to approve the money from the Transformation Reserve, six councillors voted for the decision. Three councillors – the Labour councilllors abstained, meaning it was approved.
Following a break in the meeting, Councillor Townsend said that committee members suggested that a briefing was needed for what is going on with Home To School Transport.
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