(UK) Enfield: Council fears $2.3M SPED overspend; demand has doubled in past 8 years
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Enfield Council fears it could face a £1.7million [$2.3M] overspend on its transport service for children and young adults with special needs.
The spending projections, published in a recent council report, found that the cost of providing the service could rise to £11.1m [$15M] this financial year – far beyond the £9.4m [$13M] budgeted for 2026/27 by the local authority.
The local authority has a statutory obligation to deliver its Passenger Transport Service (PTS) so children and young people “can get to and from their places of education on a daily basis”.
But with costs rising by an average of 8% a year, council officers have also projected that total spending could reach up to £36.1m [$48M] over the next three years.
The figures come from a report published ahead of a proposal for the council to extend its ‘dynamic purchasing system’ (DPS) contract for these services until February 2029.
Brett Leahy, the council’s executive director of environment and communities, officially approved an extension earlier this month. It is set to come into force from tomorrow (Wednesday 20th) provided no councillor puts forward any ‘call-in’ challenges before this time.
In the report, the local authority describes its PTS as a “highly visible statutory service looking after the needs of children with educational health and care plans and special needs, delivering a cost-effective transport solution”.
Currently, the council provides this service to more than 1,400 children and young adults.
Part of this is done through personal travel budgets. However, around 950 of these children and young people use transport services provided by the local authority.
Demand for this service, facilitated “through a combination of an in-house transport provision backed up by subcontractors”, has doubled in the past eight years.
The report revealed the rising cost is “mainly due to more students, additional complex routes, and higher contract overheads such as fuel”. . . .
