Jason Salter (Head of Service – Passenger Transport) will give an update on behalf of the Passenger Transport Team at the meeting.
Minutes:
Jason Salter (Head of Service – Passenger Transport)gave an update on behalf of the passenger transport team and highlighted the following:
· Growth on SEND home to school transport requirements remained.? Provision was being made at new educational establishments and expanding at existing settings.? This would see around 500 more SEND placements in place by September 2026, with most students placed being entitled to transport.? In September 2024, there are an additional 233 places.? 100 of those places would be at the new Silverwood Rowde site where Wiltshire Council is the provider.? It was not anticipated that any additional vehicles would be required for these children as this was already set in place for September 2023, but the transition was postponed last year, due to the building not being ready.? The other spaces are spread across several other schools;
· It was felt that efforts had been exhaustedin trying to grow the taxi market in Wiltshire, but there were now some larger companies that had come on board in recent times, who are able to increase capacity with the right notice period – these companies included London Hire and 24/7 Essex;
· The team were now focusing their efforts on efficiency, and that wasn’t to say that they were not efficient before, but they were now using their Q Routes software more robustly after a period of staff training.? An example of its use was that in the new SAIL School in Salisbury, there would be an additional35 students travelling from this September 2024.? The team had been able to recast the transport for all who are travelling by using Q Routes and to date had only needed to introduce one additional vehicle to serve that school;
· The team were also targeting single occupancy taxis in order to release vehicles into the market.? Within the contracted taxis, 144 of these just had one passenger on board.? 79 of those taxis were due to geography, and to merge the passengers onto another taxi would make the journey time excessive, when compared to government guidance, or, where the student is the only passenger attending a particular school. The team would also consider enhanced payments to parents to drive their children to school, but this was not generally preferred by parents;
· The team were developing a business case to determine whether increasing the number of Council owned/leased vehicles was viable to fulfil the demand in transport, or whether the minibus market had now recovered sufficiently from when the Council had to lease their own; and
· In summary, the team were as confident as they could be that they would be able to provide for everyone who is entitled to home to school transport in September 2024.
The Chairman asked the following questions of Jason Salter:
Q Howfar forward does theteam look ahead for the future transport needs for children?
A The team are looking at capacity up to September 2026 at the current time. The SEND team provide information on anticipated need, and we may need to extend more contracts to providers out of the County to keep up with the demand.
Q Is it a risk that the Council having to use the 24/7 Essex service – is there anyone closer that offers that type of service or has capacity?
A It is a risk having to use contractors who are not local, but we are able to award contracts if they flexible and good value for us.
Q Have you considered looking at issuing licences for just school transport contracts and what are other neighbouring authorities doing in relation to this?
A I am a member of the Association of Transport Co-Ordinators and nationallythere is a push for more school only licences although there are risks associated with that as we could lose private hire drivers to that. More work was needed to look into that option fully as out of our 800 licenced taxi drivers, 650 are working on Wiltshire Council contracts and due consideration would need to be given to this option.
The following questions were asked by the Committee:
Q If there are larger firms operating in our area could they end up poaching our Wiltshire drivers and is there a danger that we could lose drivers to them who offer them more money and we lose some of our capacity?
A There is the chance that this could happen, and they would need to be aware of it but when Wiltshire ramped up their internal fleet, they took on drivers from existing operators.
Q Who controls thevehicles used by 24/7 Essex, is it done in Essex or here?
A At the start it was through Essex but now they are licenced in Swindon and Wiltshire – there had been no quality issues (apart from a few late drivers at the start) but they have now found their feet and were providing a good service for Wiltshire within their 20 contracts.
Q Have the team had considered looking to see if there were any Community Transport Schemes who may be able to assist the school transport needs?
A There are currently 21 community transport operations within Wiltshire andthe Council do currently contract some of those schemes for Wiltshire transport provision, but generally speaking after Officers have spoken to Chairs of these community transport schemes they don’t usually want the responsibility of school transport as it is not within their terms and conditions to form part of their core business.
The Chairman highlighted that if Officers thought there was any merit in the Committee or a Subgroup to look at an aspect/option under consideration then they should let the Clerk know and then a Subgroup could be set up or an item added to the main Committee agenda.
Resolved:
That the Committee note the update on behalf of the Passenger Transport Team.