Overview of home to school transport
Every local authority is required by law to provide home to school travel arrangements for ‘eligible children’ of compulsory school age (5 to 16 years old), and to provide and publicise a Home to School Transport policy.
For pupils living in Central Bedfordshire, mainstream home to school transport is currently available where a child attends either their nearest suitable school or a school based on Central Bedfordshire Council school catchment areas:
- that does not have an available walking route from their home to school. This may include footpaths, bridleways and other pathways, as well as recognised roads
- and/or the distance from their home to their school is more than the statutory walking distance of 3 miles (or 2 miles, if the child is under 8 years old)
- and/or for low-income families
See our current Home to School Transport policy for more details about eligibility criteria.
We have reviewed our current Home to School Transport policy, and are proposing an important change to the service to provide transport to the nearest suitable school (with available places) only to:
- align with most other councils and statutory guidance
- manage and reduce the increasing costs of providing mainstream school transport
- make our policy clearer and fairer
- deliver additional benefits with fewer school buses on the road, helping to support a more sustainable future
We have produced two impact documents:
- Appendix 1 - Maps to illustrate what the change means not using catchments and instead nearest schools only
- Appendix 2 - Summary of the impact assessment findings grouped by school type and individual schools on our current mainstream transport arrangements
Please use our postcode lookups to find the nearest school.