Taxis to School Cost £6.4M in 2024

A total of £3 Billion has been spent from Jan 2020 to Jan 2025

I have started identifying different themes for the spending.

You can see that Pensions and Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) account for a lot of the "Theme" spending.

The £22 million spent on Taxis looked interesting, so I dug a bit deeper. These aren't taxi journeys made by Councillors, they are mostly taxis that take pupils to and from school every day. In 2024 £6.4 Million was spent on "HTST - Non Salary Travel", which is how this category of spending is categorised. The spending drops off in school holidays, but the figure for December 2024 was £903,899 which is by far the highest monthly amount spent in 2024. If these cost increases continue to rise then it won't be very long before we are regularly spending £1 million a month on "taxi to school" travel.

The spiraling cost of Home to School Travel is a national issue that threatens the finances of many Councils across the country.

Councils predict home-to-school travel costs could soar to £2 billion this financial year, with transport for pupils with special educational needs costing up to £1.5 billion – nearly treble what it cost a decade ago.

They are expecting to spend an additional £514 million on transport to mainstream schools, up 46 per cent since 2015-16.

Schools Minister Catherine McKinnell said there were several reasons for the increased costs, including the rising cost of fuel, driver shortages and more children with education, health and care plans travelling long distances to a school that could meet their needs.

Bristol City Council acknowledge that the demand and cost of providing Home to School Travel is increasing and in Dec 2024 they committed to spend £1.8 million to buy Electric Vehicles and employing drivers to start providing this service directly.

This investment is aimed at improving service reliability, reducing emissions, contributing to improving the city’s air quality and reducing costs.

Councillor Christine Townsend, Chair of the Children and Young People Committee, said: “This commitment to invest in the Home to School Transport is much needed to ensure we are delivering sustainable, and vital services for our SEND families. This investment represents a practical approach to ensuring we are supporting those families in such a way that also enables us to meet our ambitions of a net-zero council and city.”

The plan includes purchasing 29 electric vehicles and recruiting drivers to replace higher-cost routes currently managed by external providers. Beyond serving HTST needs, the fleet could also be extended to support other Council departments where appropriate, offering citywide benefits.

Procurement of new electric vehicles will be staggered over two years as the right vehicles become available and drivers can be recruited.

The Council is clearly planning to bring some of these services "in house" and reduce the reliance on local taxi companies. The relationship between the Council and local taxi companies has been fractious at times, and the move away from using private taxi companies will not improve this relationship.

08/11/2023 - "Bristol’s cabbies are being put out of work by council licensing delays and mixups"

08/11/2023 - "Cab driver says good character used against him in ‘cruel sting operation’"

21/12/2023 - "Bristol City Council staff could drive disabled children to school"

27/03/2024 - "Taxis taking disabled Bristol children to schools as far as 50 miles away"

It is interesting to note that the Council "Bristol Taxi Forum" has not held a meeting since January 2024.

These are the taxi companies that provided the service to Bristol City Council during 2024.

The supplier that receives the most for providing the "Taxi to School" service since 2020 is Magans Taxis who have been paid £6,296,549 in total by Bristol City Council.

With the costs of school transport only increasing, perhaps we need to think about going back to the days of providing school buses for everyone. But to achieve that we would need to invest in a local public transport system that meets the needs of everyone. Perhaps the £107 million spent on Bristol Beacon since 2020 might have been better used on providing a sustainable and reliable "Travel to School" solution.