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School Transport Consultation: What local authorities have to provide


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Local authorities must comply with legislation when providing free home to school transport.

Welsh local authorities must:

  • Assess the travel needs of learners in their authority area
  • Provide free home to school transport for learners of compulsory school age (5 to 16 years old) attending primary school who live 2 miles or further from their nearest suitable school
  • Provide free home to school transport for learners of compulsory school age (5 to 16 years old attending secondary school who live 3 miles or further from their nearest suitable school
  • Assess and meet the needs of children “looked after” in their authority area
  • Promote sustainable modes of travel

As the Local Authority must comply with the above requirements, we are not consulting on these aspects of our current policy.

Local authorities also have discretionary powers to provide home to school transport for other reasons and we would like your views on our discretionary criteria in this consultation.

The current Conwy County Borough Council Home to School Transport Policy has the following discretionary criteria:

  • Transport to Welsh medium schools over the statutory distance when it is not the nearest school
  • Transport for learners who change address during the exam years of their education so that they can remain at the same school
  • Transport to denominational schools over the statutory distance
  • Transport for Gypsy Roma Traveller children within the statutory distance
  • Provision of transport to two residences where parents live separately
  • Post 16 transport over the statutory distance and to establishments providing most subjects pupils wish to study at post 16
  • Transport for pupils with medical conditions or additional learning needs (ALN)
  • Transport for pupils who meet the specified behavioural criteria

Each year we provide approximately 4000 learners with transport, of which just under half receive their transport for statutory reasons.

Those who receive free transport on the basis of discretionary criteria can be broken down as follows:

discretionary_transport_by_criteria

Next page: The home to school transport budget 

Previous page: Why we are consulting now

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