The Strategic Director of Social Care and Education will provide a verbal update in relation to the Taxi Transport Service for SEND children.
Minutes:
The Strategic Director for Social Care and Education provided a verbal update in relation to the Taxi Transport Service for SEND children. The following was noted:
· Approximately 18 months ago the transport service for SEND children moved from being held in the housing division to the education division.
· £7.5m was spent on taxi services in Leicester City taking children to and from schools, an amount which was noted to be a large majority of funding the Council had to support education.
· The unit costs being paid for these journeys was significantly higher compared to other cities in the country, one reason for this was the amount of transport being provided.
· The contracts were looked into to see if there was a different way the services could be procured. It was aimed to move away from the framework of a taxi provider bidding for a route of transporting a new service user, to moving to an agreed fixed price for each route which would be in two parts; 1) a flat rate for doing any journey and 2) a per mile distance rate.
· Engagement with the operators took place over an extended period and the proposed arrangements were worked through with the taxi providers, a formal procurement process took place and a number of taxi companies made bids and contracts were awarded.
· It was planned that the new arrangements would commence from January 2021. However, when assigning routes to individual taxi providers, the operators were not content with the offered rates and doing the work under those newly procured terms, even though those rates had been explicit throughout the procurement process.
· As a result, the existing contract was then extended until half term to allow for further engagement with the taxi operators to see whether within the procurement boundaries there was scope to adjust the arrangements, however it was not possible to reach an agreement. The procurement process was then abandoned, and the existing contract extended for a further year until a new procurement exercise could be completed.
· The service has had to go back to the drawing board to identify options that could be used to do this. These included: looking at travel training, providing support to families to be able to transport children themselves to schools and looking at the range of alternative travel options.
Members of the Commission discussed the taxi transport service for SEND children and the Strategic Director for Social Care and Education responded to the queries, as below:
· The reasons why the agreement didn’t hold were further clarified, one being that taxi operators thought there was scope for further negotiation following the agreement of fixed prices, however the procurement contract didn’t allow for this.
· LCC was looking to reduce costs by 10% (£1m) across the overall £10m taxi budget, to be in line with the costs of their statistical neighbours. The procurement process over the next year would look at how the loss of saving for this year could be mitigated and it was reiterated that if travel training and other aspects were implemented this could allow some costs to be recouped.
· It was confirmed that during the process there was no impact to children and no child was left without transport as the existing contractual arrangements continued.
AGREED:
1. That the verbal update be noted.
2. Request a report to be brought regarding the financial impact and the impact on the vulnerable communities being engaged with to the April meeting.