The Green Party at North Yorkshire Council are calling for continuous review of the Appeals Process, following Wednesday’s decision that the policy will not be reviewed until mid-next year. The Greens’ aim is to find a way to stop wasting so much money with the appeals system, and support the needs of the thousands of parents navigating its flaws.
This proposal came to light at the Selby and Ainsty Area Committee meeting yesterday, when Cllr Arnold Warneken proposed to ask the Scrutiny Committee to review the appeals process as they go along, to avoid repeating mistakes, and to provide some guidance to officers for future appeals. This was supported by Cllr Andrew Lee and will go to the next Scrutiny Committee meeting.
Cllr Andy Brown (Green):
It is quite wrong to delay reviewing a crude and clumsy policy for a year. It is even more wrong to let the people who introduced and implemented it fiercely, to then conduct the review. We need start improving this deeply flawed home to school transport policy in North Yorkshire and we need to start now.
Cllr Arnold Warneken (Green):
So, given that the rules say we can’t revisit decisions nearly a year, we propose a continuous improvement model for the Appeals Process. This approach would at least allow officers to continuously improve the model, and move away from a groundhog day of mistakes until the review.
More and more parents are appealing, and it’s very time consuming for our cash-strapped council. This will help members to have confidence in their discretionary powers, so that common sense can always prevail and cases can be dealt with more quickly, rather than eternal wrangling because the computer says no.
- The Selby and Ainsty Area Committee on 18 September saw resident Dr Ruth Walker speak eloquently about the policy. She drew attention to the fact that on the mapping, a gate had not been taken account of on the journey to Tadcaster Grammar, skewing distance affecting many families. She pointed out that we should be learning from these kind of mistakes, which gave Arnold Warneken the idea of the continuous review the Greens are proposing.
- Kirsty Poskitt (Independent) chaired the Selby meeting on Friday and voted in favour of the proposal. Earlier this week, Kirsty had proposed to the Children and Families Scrutiny Committee to get a working group to stop officers marking their own homework, but this was rejected, so it remains to be seen how they will receive this new proposal.
Councillors were briefed about details surrounding a review of North Yorkshire Council’s revised home to school travel policy.
Members of the authority’s children and families overview and scrutiny committee will met on Wednesday (September 17) to be informed about a post-implementation review that will take place in July next year.
The timing is designed to allow a full round of admissions to have taken place and travel to have begun and operated for a year.
North Yorkshire Council’s deputy leader, Cllr Gareth Dadd, whose responsibilities include finance, said:
We adopted this policy last year to ensure that we can provide the fairest system possible for all parents, while facing such significant rises in the cost of providing the service.
The meeting on Wednesday is an opportunity for elected members to learn more about what the review entails so they will be able to see the progress of the policy after its first year of implementation.
They represent our communities and will have listened to feedback and so it will be valuable to hear what the committee’s members feel about the scope of the review.
In July last year, North Yorkshire Council’s members voted to replace the previous home to school travel policy which offered the choice of travel to the nearest school or the child’s catchment area school.
The changes, which were implemented from September 1, 2024, were designed to make the authority’s home to school transport policy fair to all families, responsible and affordable.
Providing school transport is one of the three largest areas of the council’s expenditure, now costing the council £52.5 million a year – alongside adult social care and waste management.
North Yorkshire Council is one of the highest spending local authorities in the country on home to school transport.
If the policy had not been revised, then the rising cost of home to school travel could have had a crippling effect on the other services the council must deliver by law.
The review aims to evaluate the effectiveness, success and overall impact of the revised policy. It will also focus on assessing challenges encountered during the rollout, monitor if the intended objectives have been achieved and collect ideas to improve future efforts.
Under the revised policy:
- Free transport is provided for eligible pupils to the nearest school to their home address.
- Support is provided with travel to a child who lives within the statutory walking distance to their catchment or nearest suitable school if the route has been assessed as “unsafe” and there is no other alternative route below the statutory walking distance.
- All contracted routes used to take pupils to school are risk assessed.
- Discretionary powers have been extended for the eligibility of travel assistance for secondary age pupils from low-income families to attend one of their three nearest suitable schools within two to 12 miles. This is to reflect the rural context of the county and ensure low-income families in rural areas are supported.
Cllr Dadd said:
We listened to people’s views and consulted widely on the proposals before the new policy was introduced. We introduced the new policy to make sure that frontline services can be protected due to the escalating costs of providing home to school transport.
We continue to listen to feedback and are committed to the review of the policy next summer.
