Meeting documents

For the Chairman of the Committee to provide an update on recent scrutiny related activity.

The Chairman thanked Miss Callaghan, Service Director Education, for her time at Buckinghamshire County Council and wished her well in her new role. He also welcomed Ms Thompson-Omenka as Acting Service Director Education.

The Chairman gave updates about the Committee’s informal meetings with Buckinghamshire Social Workers which had taken place over the summer period and said that feedback would be provided to assist the Service Director. A fostering and adoption briefing had also taken place and the Chairman commended officers within the service area, who had been working hard to improve the fostering and adoption service.

Committee Members requested that an outstanding social worker visit to the High Wycombe office was rearranged and that the Service Area made information about the latest Buckinghamshire A-level and GCSE results publicly available. Representatives from the Service Area explained later on during the meeting that the High Wycombe office had been part of a refurbishment project, so access had been restricted, and that results for A-levels and GCSE’s had not yet been verified, so therefore could not be released.

ACTION – Committee and Governance Advisor to liaise with service area

The Chairman expressed that he had received a number of concerned and disgruntled communications from local parents, about home to school transport, and for this purpose he had invited Mr Robson, Head of Integrated Transport, who discussed issues with the Committee Members.

Mr Robson updated the Committee with the key issues that had negatively affected the home to school service over the summer break. There had been ICT and call system issues, plus additional problems with the payment system. At times, parents hadn’t been able to speak with customer service representatives or leave messages at the call centre. The service had been fully operational since 3^rd September and they had dealt with most issues through contingency measures, but equally they acknowledged the undue stress and disruption which this had caused parents and children across Buckinghamshire. Passes had been hand-delivered to the Schools to ensure children could travel on the first day of term and all 4000 young people who had qualified for free transport had managed to get into school on the first day of term. The service area had learned from the incident and would be introducing a new system for pass distribution and telephony processes. The main concern had been around paid-for-transport. Mr Robson stressed that it had been clearly stated within the council’s terms and conditions that paid-for-transport is not available for every child and only if there is an available seat. There would be a significant impact on budget if all children were to be offered a paid-for-place, as it is subsidised by the council and any changes to use during the academic year had created risks to the budget.

A Member of the Committee suggested that places for more vulnerable year 7 students should be prioritised and that places could be taken away from students who were in year 11 or older, as they were more experienced and more able to be independent. Mr Robson agreed that this could be a direction which the service area could explore.

In response to a Committee Member’s concerns about SEND provision, Mr Robson reassured them that there hadn’t been many issues with SEND provision and that he would be happy to look into any reported incidences after the meeting.

The Chairman questioned the service area as to whether children who had no safe walking route to their school placement were still able to access a form of public transport to be able to attend their school placement. Mr Robson told the Committee that he had actively been working with the commercial transport sector to create new services for this purpose. He expected a further 30 services to be commissioned by November, but stressed that the council no longer had any governance over these commercial services, due to the decommissioning of public services to the private sector. In general the commercial sector had been very cooperative when ensuring safeguarding procedures had been in place for school children using their services and had signed a contractual agreement to ensure these remained in place.

The Chairman thanked Mr Robson for attending and delivering his update.