School transport

This fact sheet is aimed mainly at parents who have been refused help from the council with their child’s transport costs to school and may be considering making a complaint to the Ombudsman.

I have been refused help with my child’s transport costs to school. Can I complain to the Ombudsman?

Yes, in some circumstances. The Ombudsman cannot question the council’s decision, if it took the decision properly and fairly. But we can consider your complaint if you think you were refused help unfairly, or because of a mistake, or because your request for help was not handled correctly. 

You can complain to the Ombudsman if your child goes to a 'qualifying school'. We cannot deal with complaints about transport to an independent (private) school, unless it is named in your child’s Education, Health and Care Plan.

How do I complain?

You should complete the council's Home to School Travel and Transport Review/Appeals process first. You will usually have to complete all review stages before we will look at your complaint.

The council’s policy should say how long it will take to respond. Our Complaint Handling Code says councils should have no more than two stages in a complaint process. The longest a complaint should take is 16 weeks.

The council should provide you with updates on your complaint, including when it may take longer to respond.

If your complaint is not making any progress, you can follow our top tips for making a complaint to find out what is happening.

If you complained more than 16 weeks ago, and you have not received a final response, we may be able to make enquiries about what is happening to your complaint. You should have tried to ask the council what is happening before contacting us about any delay.

If the council has sent you a final response (usually saying something like ‘this is our final response’) and you are unhappy with the outcome, you can complain to us.

You should normally make your complaint to us within 12 months of realising that the council has done something wrong.

If you can consider my complaint what will the Ombudsman look for?

We consider whether the council has done something wrong in the way it went about dealing with your application for help. Some of the issues we can look at are that:

  • the council’s policy for providing help with transport is not objective, clear and fair
  • the council failed to apply their policy properly or fairly
  • the council did not take relevant information into account in reaching its decision, or took irrelevant information into account, or
  • the council delayed dealing with your application for help.

What happens if the Ombudsman finds that the council was at fault?

If we find that something has gone wrong in the way your application was dealt with that might have affected the decision, we may:

  • ask the council to review its decision
  • ask the council to reimburse travel costs you have already incurred, and/or
  • recommend that the council reviews its policy and/or procedures, so that the problems you experienced don’t keep happening to other parents.

What if my child has special educational needs?

The council may have responsibilities for helping with home to school transport where a child has special educational needs, whether there is an Education, Health and Care Plan or not. We can usually consider complaints where special educational needs are involved.

Examples of some complaints we have considered

Three complainants complained the council had assessed their post-16 children as being eligible for transport support but then offered a personal travel budget without considering whether this was a viable solution for their individual circumstances. We found the council was applying restrictive criteria about when it would offer a vehicle instead of a budget as the method of transport support and it had not considered individual circumstances including cost or affordability when setting the level of the personal travel budget. The council agreed to review the individual cases and to reimburse costs where it overturned the previous decision on review. The council agreed to review its policy, training and guidance and to improve record keeping when recording reasons for decisions.
Ms X’s child was under 8 years old and lived more than two miles from their nearest qualifying school. The council agreed they were eligible for free home to school transport and offered a bus pass to Ms X and her child. Ms X complained this was an unreasonable offer. In response to our investigation the council accepted it was the council’s responsibility to provide transport for an eligible child that did not rely on a parent to accompany them. It reviewed the case and offered Ms X a symbolic payment in recognition of her inconvenience.
Mrs Z complained about the council’s decision to withdraw transport to college for her child, who was over 16. We found the council withdrew transport on the basis Mrs Z’s child was undertaking travel training but the evidence showed they were not yet travel trained, and were not expected to be so before the final year at college.  We found fault in the decision making to end council funded transport before travel training had been successfully completed. We asked the council to review its decision and make a symbolic payment to acknowledge Mrs Z’s time and trouble.

Other sources of information

For information about whether your child is likely to qualify for school transport, plus access to your education authority’s information about school transport go to www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-to-school-travel-and-transport-guidance

Independent Parental Special Education Advice (IPSEA) have some specific guidance on their website at www.ipsea.org.uk/what-you-need-to-know/home-to-school-college-transport

Our fact sheets give some general information about the most common type of complaints we receive but they cannot cover every situation. If you are not sure whether we can look into your complaint, please contact us.

We provide a free, independent and impartial service. We consider complaints about the administrative actions of councils and some other authorities. We cannot question what a council has done simply because someone does not agree with it. If we find something has gone wrong, such as poor service, service failure, delay or bad advice and that a person has suffered as a result we aim to get it put right by recommending a suitable remedy.

October 2025

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