CUTS to City of York Council’s home to school transport budget will not see pupils being denied a way of getting to school, a senior council officer has said – despite tighter new eligibility criteria being “rigorously applied”.

The council pays for buses and taxis for children to get to school who otherwise might struggle to do so, but the council has historically overspent in this area and savings totalling £300,000 over the next five years were agreed in the February budget.

The authority has also agreed to cut the cost of home to school transport for pupils with special needs and disabilities (SEND) as part of an agreement with the Department for Education which will see York given £17 million to help fill a black hole in its education budget.

The main pressures on the budget are taxis for children in care and SEND pupils and the need for three more buses to Huntington and Fulford schools.

A council report said new criteria were now in place and that “parental requests for out of city placements [would] not automatically result in transport being provided”.

Labour councillor Bob Webb said he understood that the council needed to take the government money “due to austerity and lack of funding from national government”, but raised concerns about the impact cuts could have on vulnerable children.

Cllr Webb said: “My worry is how do we guarantee that we’re not going to get into a situation where families and children with special educational needs are struggling to access school?”

Maxine Squire, assistant director of education and skills, said the council was looking “very carefully” at the eligibility criteria.

She added: “One of the things that we’re very keen to do is promote independent travel, because we do feel that that’s a key life skill for children and young people to develop.

“We’re not going to be taking transport away from people, we’re going to make sure that we are appropriately assessing their transport needs and that we are putting in the right transport solutions for them.”

The council’s independent travel training service will form part of the assessments, Ms Squire said.

She added: “It’s really important that we are helping to prepare children and young people at the earliest stages in their lives for being included in York, which is a city that’s got good transport connectivity, and how they can use more green and more sustainable forms of transport, because that will help support them into adult life.

“It’s not about denying people the chance to get to school or get to their colleges. It’s just looking at how we get the most appropriate method of transport in place.”

The meeting of the council’s children, education and communities policy and scrutiny committee heard that the children’s services department is registering a £7.2 million overspend on its budget, driven mainly by more children being taken into care during the pandemic.