Freedom of Information Request 3201

Kirklees Transport Team

The Kirklees Transport Team is responsible for providing assistance to:

A. Eligible pupils who have special educational needs, physical difficulties and medical needs. This could be door to door or from a pick up point. Vehicles used are taxis, minibuses and coaches.

B. Eligible pupils who live over the qualifying distance to mainstream school. (These pupils may have special needs but do not require a higher level of assistance i.e pupils with dyslexia).

Assistance is in the form of a free bus pass to use on public transport, or a seat on a contracted vehicle where there is no public bus service available.

We also arrange transport for:

C. Other services who may submit a request due to family/social difficulties, or, the client is no longer of school age but still requires transport assistance. However, transport for these pupils is paid for by the service who has requested the transport arrangement.

These services include Children and Families, Post 16 and Adult Learning, and Adult Services. As we do not make all the transport arrangements for these services we are unable to provide comprehensive budget information. This should be obtained from the relevant service as they manage their own budgets.

The figures below do not included amounts for pupils receiving transport due to social and family difficulties.

This Freedom of Information request asked:

How much does Kirklees Council pay a year for private taxis to take children and young adults to school and other learning centres around the country?

N.B. - The request asked for amount spent on `taxis'. However the vehicles contracted by Kirklees Transport Team could be taxis with 4 to 8 passenger seats, or PSV vehicles which have upwards of 9 passenger seats. A client could be moved from a `taxi' to a `PSV' vehicle at any point in the school year therefore we do not split the costs between the types of vehicle.

The figures provided show the cost of taxi/PSV transport for pupils with special needs as described in `A' above. There has been zero expenditure by the Transport Team for pupils without special or medical needs.

Summary of expenditure

2004/2005 2,004,300

2005/2006 1,956,600

2006/2007 1,871,674

2007/2008 1,976,724

2008/2009 2,007,234

2009/2010 2,139,756