North Yorkshire councillors have called for an ongoing review of the “deeply flawed” home-to-school transport appeals process.
Members of the Green Party group on North Yorkshire Council say they have made the plea after hearing last week that the controversial policy would not be reviewed until next year.
The council has faced criticism for the way parents’ appeals over the refusal of free school transport have been handled.
The current policy means that free school transport is only available to a child's closest school.
Councillor Arnold Warneken has proposed that the authority’s scrutiny committee for children and families review the appeals process as the hearings take place.
He said:
“Given that the rules say we can’t revisit decisions for 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.”
Cllr Warneken said he got the idea after hearing from a parent how a gate at Tadcaster Grammar School had been missed, which skewed the results of the mapping system used by the council to calculate distances.
Critics of the appeals process say they not taking into account families’ individual circumstances.
A decision to limit the ability of advocates to speak on behalf of parents at hearings has also been criticised.
Aire Valley Councillor Andy Brown said:
“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 to start improving this deeply flawed home-to-school transport policy in North Yorkshire and we need to start now.”
Council bosses have defended the policy, which means free school transport is only available to a child’s nearest school, and the appeals process.
The policy was changed by the council in a bid to reduce the £52m annual bill for school transport.
Speaking at a recent council meeting, Daniel Harry, head of democratic services, said parents attending a stage two appeal could bring someone to support them who could make a statement at the meeting and raise any points of clarification or questions through the appellant.
He added:
“All appeals are considered on their merits. This has been consistent throughout.
“The policy implementation review will look at the administration of the home-to-school travel policy, including a summary of the enquiries, complaints, appeals and the council’s responses to these.”
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