Summary: Mrs Y complains about the Council’s delay in making transport arrangements available for her child, D, to attend the school named in their Education Health and Care plan. When Mrs Y complained to the Council, it did not respond for over seven months. The Council has already paid £500 in recognition of Mrs Y’s distress and has agreed to make a further payment of £200 in recognition of the anxiety caused to D. The Council will also publish information about how it processes school transport mileage allowance claims.

The complaint

1. Mrs Y complains about the Council’s handling of her child’s school transport. She says the Council initially stated in the EHC Plan that parents must arrange the transport, meaning she had no choice but to appeal to the SEND tribunal.
2. The Council conceded the appeal and agreed to arrange the transport, but it did not start until six weeks after the start of the school term which caused inconvenience and distress.
3. Mrs Y also complains about poor communication and complaints handling. She wants the Council to apologise and pay a suitable remedy for the inconvenience and distress caused.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

4. We cannot investigate a complaint if someone has appealed to a tribunal about the same matter. We also cannot investigate a complaint if in doing so we would overlap with the role of a tribunal to decide something which has been or could have been referred to it to resolve using its own powers. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
5. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. If there has been fault which has caused significant injustice, or that could cause injustice to others in the future we may suggest a remedy. (Local Government Act 1974, sections 26(1) and 26A(1), as amended)
6. If we are satisfied with an organisation’s actions or proposed actions, we can complete our investigation and issue a decision statement. (Local Government Act 1974, section 30(1B) and 34H(1), as amended)

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What I have and have not investigated

7. Mrs Y complains about the Council’s decision to insert a transport clause into Section I of D’s EHC plan. We have not investigated the events leading to that decision because Mrs Y has appealed. We have no jurisdiction to consider the same matter for the reasons explained in paragraph four of this statement.

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How I considered this complaint

8. I considered evidence provided by Mrs Y and the Council as well as relevant law, policy and guidance.
9. Mrs Y and the Council had an opportunity to comment on my draft decision. I considered any comments received before making a final decision.
10. Under our information sharing agreement, we will share this decision with the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted).

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What I found

11. Mrs Y has a child, who we will call D. They transferred from primary to secondary school in September 2024. D has an EHC plan. In January 2024 the Council issued a final EHC plan naming Mrs Y’s preferred secondary school in Section I. The Council also included the following clause:

“Parent has expressed a preference under the provisions of Paragraph 3 of Schedule 27 to the Education Act 1996 for [D] to attend the above school. The Local Authority (LA) accepts that this school would be suitable. However, it is not the nearest suitable school, and the LA considers that it would be incompatible with the efficient use of its resources if it had to provide home to school transport to this school. That being so, the LA has agreed to name the school on the express condition that parent accepts and continues to accept liability for arranging and funding home to school transport”.

12. Mrs Y says she did not initially notice this clause and she applied for school transport on 15 March 2024. The Council refused the application on 18 March 2024 and referred to the clause.
13. After receiving the refusal, Mrs Y applied to the SEND Tribunal to make a late appeal. In July 2024 the Council said it wanted to work with Mrs Y to agree a resolution. When Mrs Y did not receive any further updates, she contacted her MP’s office who chased the matter on her behalf.
14. Following this, the Council decided to concede the appeal. The Tribunal issued a consent order dated 25 July 2024 which confirmed the decision to amend Section I of the EHC plan and to remove the transport clause.
15. In August 2024 the Council told Mrs Y it would contact her again to provide further details about the transport arrangements. Mrs Y did not receive any further contact, so she chased the Council several times throughout August.
16. D started secondary school in September 2024. The school transport was not in place, so Mrs Y took D to school and sometimes used privately funded axis. When she raised this with the Council, it told her she could submit expenses to receive reimbursement in the interim. The Council also told Mrs Y that D’s transport application was ‘late’ due to being submitted after the June deadline.
17. Mrs Y started to submit weekly expenses, but she said the Council delayed in paying her and then queried some of the routes she used. Mrs Y said longer routes were sometimes necessary due to traffic and roadworks.
18. Records provided by the Council show that Mrs Y submitted her first set of expenses on 15 September 2024, and once each week thereafter until 21 October 2024. The Council made a payment of £560 on 23 October 2024.
19. After further communication with the Council throughout September, the Council confirmed on 4 October that it had awarded a transport tender to a local taxi firm. Records show that D’s taxi transport started from 9 October 2024.
20. Mrs Y complained to the Council in November 2024, and the Council responded in July 2025. The Council upheld the complaint and proposed a remedy. Dissatisfied, Mrs Y complained to the LGSCO.

Was there fault by the Council causing injustice to Mrs Y and D?

21. The Council has already paid £500 to Mrs Y in recognition of the time and trouble caused by the significant delay in responding to her complaint. Mrs Y complained to the LGSCO because she felt the Council’s remedy only addressed the time and trouble she spent dealing with the poor complaint handling and did not reflect the significant inconvenience and distress she faced while transporting D to school throughout September. Mrs Y also felt the Council did not acknowledge the impact on D, who experienced heightened anxiety during their transition from primary to secondary school.
22. When the SEND Tribunal is in the process of approving a consent order, the Council should not pause or delay its actions. It is expected to begin implementing what has been agreed without delay. For example, if the Council has accepted the parent’s preferred school, it should not wait for the formal consent order to be issued before updating Section I of the EHC plan to name that school or before reassessing the child’s entitlement to home-to-school transport.
23. The Council’s ‘SEND/Home-to-School Transport’ guidance says that parents should allow up to 20 working days for new transport arrangements to be put in place after approval. While there are no statutory timescales regarding amendments to an EHC plan made following a consent order, as stated above, the Council should have implemented the straight-forward amendment quickly and without delay. Following that amendment, D became eligible for funded transport which should have been arranged within 20 working days. It is therefore my view the Council delayed in making the transport arrangements; something which it accepted in the complaint response: “… there were delays in [D] being able to start [their] new school and transition to the secondary learning environment with new peers and a new learning environment”.
24. The fault caused injustice to both Mrs Y and D because:
• Mrs Y had to transport D to school for five weeks. This caused frustration and inconvenience because Mrs Y had to keep records of all journeys for submission to the Council as travel expenses.
• In response to our enquiries, the Council said the timescales for travel expense claims are stated in the transport policy. Having reviewed that policy, as well as the Council’s website, there is no information about how the Council processes and pays parental mileage claims. This lack of clarity meant Mrs Y could not manage her finances as she did not know what to expect or judge when a delay became unreasonable.
• Mrs Y experienced additional time and trouble because of the Council’s significant delay in responding to her complaint. She submitted her complaint on 18 November 2024, but the Council did not reply until 8 July 2025. This delay fell well outside the Council’s expected complaint-handling timescales.
• D, who has ADHD and Anxiety, had the added uncertainty of not knowing how they would get to school from September. Mrs Y says this caused avoidable distress at an important time of transition from primary to secondary school.
25. The £500 already paid to Mrs Y is a proportionate remedy for her frustration, time and trouble caused by the fault identified above. It is in line with the LGSCO’s Remedies Guidance. However, the Council has agreed to also implement the additional actions we have listed in the section below to remedy the injustice caused to D and to improve its service.

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Action

26. Within four weeks of our final decision, the Council has agreed to:
• In addition to the £500 already paid to Mrs Y, pay a further £200 to Mrs Y for the injustice caused to D. This is in recognition of the avoidable distress and uncertainty caused by the delay in arranging D’s transport at an important period of educational transition.
27. Within eight weeks of our final decision, the Council has agreed to:
• Publish information about the process for claiming a mileage allowance. This could be in the Council’s policy or within the relevant section of its website. The information should include how to submit claims, what evidence is needed, when claim periods close and how long reimbursement will take.
28. The Council will provide us with evidence it has complied with the above actions.

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Decision

29. I find fault causing injustice. The Council has agreed to implement the actions listed above to remedy the injustice caused.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman