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School transport Maladministration causing injustice
20 November 2007
When Mrs T chose to send her daughter V to a school over three miles from her home, she realised that the Council would not provide any assistance with transport and that the family would have to make its own arrangements. These initially worked well with V catching a bus or getting a lift with a friend. However when V was in the first term of her GCSE year she developed mobility problems and travel to school became very difficult. V’s school and Mrs T contacted the Council at various times to request assistance with transport but this was refused. An appeal to the student support appeals panel was unsuccessful; a second appeal to that panel allowed the appeal and the Council provided transport for V for the next two terms. As Mrs T was unable to progress her complaint further through the Council’s complaints procedure she complained to the Ombudsman.
It became clear during the investigation that the Council had initially failed to consider its duties under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Nor had the Council fully taken account of its education transport policy, which said that assistance could be given in special circumstances. The Council and the appeal panel initially appeared not to appreciate that, while V had not been attending her nearest suitable school, her illness and examination course meant that she was now unable to attend any other school.
The Ombudsman found that the Council’s procedures for dealing with requests for help with transport were inadequate and that it failed both to apply its own education transport policy properly and to consider its duties to the child under the Disability Discrimination Act. The Council also took too long to deal with Mrs T’s complaint about the issue.
The Ombudsman asked the Council to:
Date Updated: 17/12/08
are in .pdf format. To view these files you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader software. It can be downloaded below free of charge. Click To Download