North Yorkshire Council has been told to apologise to parents after failings were found over its handling of their home-to-school transport appeals by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
The authority must also rerun several appeals panel hearings made by families who were denied free transport following a change in policy.
But campaigners claim the council is still not treating parents fairly as more families discover the policy change will impact on them.
Councillors on the authority’s children and families overview and scrutiny committee were asked for their response after being informed of the ombudsman’s findings in at least fives cases so far at a meeting at County Hall in Northallerton today.
Jo Foster, from the campaign group School Transport Action Group (STAG), asked members of the committee if they were aware of a “growing number” of ombudsman decisions finding fault with the way the council handled parents’ appeals.
She added:
“Those findings have already resulted in demands that appeals are rerun and formal apologies issued.
“That is wasting significant taxpayer money and officer time revisiting decisions that should have been right first time.”
The policy change, introduced by the council to reduce an annual school transport bill of more than £50m, means children will be given free transport to their nearest school rather than their catchment school.
The campaigner said the council was making the same mistakes when dealing with fresh appeals from parents with children due to attend new schools in September.
She said these included parents being denied access to route maps which decisions on nearest schools were based on.
She added:
“The consequence is entirely predictable: more appeals, more complaints, more pressure on officers, more stress for families and further damage to the council’s reputation.
“The role of scrutiny is to intervene when systems are not working fairly and when residents are being disadvantaged.
“Many parents feel that is precisely what is happening here.”
But chair of the committee, Councillor Caroline Goodrick, said the committee would not debate the issue.
Instead, she read out a statement from the authority that said stage two home-to-school transport appeals were heard by an independent cross-party committee.
It added:
“The appeals are conducted in line with the DfE guidance and the 2024 home-to-school transport policy, upon which the committee members have been trained.
“The role of the committee is to consider whether the policy has been applied correctly and then whether there are any exceptional individual circumstances that would satisfy a departure from that policy.
“The appeals committee continues to apply the policy of the DfE guidance in a consistent manner, and whilst it would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases, we positively and constructively engage with the Local Government Ombudsman and take into account any findings that they make.”
Cllr Goodrick said the findings of a post-implementation review, which was underway, would be brought back to the committee in September, when there would be a “robust debate”.
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