Maidenhead & Windsor

The Maidenhead Royal Borough is to streamline the provision of home-to-school transport for special education needs pupils living within the borough in a bid to provide a higher quality service with fully trained drivers and assistants and to increase focus on special training and safety checks.

This will be achieved by reducing the number of contractors Maidenhead council works with from 31 to 10. Home-to-school transport is provided for more than 250 special education needs pupils on 79 different routes to various special education needs schools. The new system will come into effect from the start of the next academic year September 2006.

Maidenhead Cllr Cynthia Pitteway, lead member for education and lifelong learning, said: "This is a great step forward in improving the borough's service to special education needs children and their parents. Through working more closely with a smaller number of operators, we can ensure the focus is where it should be, namely the safety and care of the children while they are traveling to and from school.

"We will be working closely with parents before the new system is implemented for the autumn term later this year."

Neil Beswick, principal officer, Maidenhead passenger transport team, said: "To help to improve the quality of the service provided by the passenger transport team and the transport operators, a thorough review of home-to-school services took place.

"The review's conclusion was that by grouping viable routes together, we could reduce the number of operators we contract with. This will help the passenger transport team spend less time on administrative duties and help focus on the important area of training for all contractors' staff. It will also enable us to increase our monitoring of the transport to schools, which is vital to ensure that safe, secure and timely transport of pupils is being provided."

In the run-up to the decision, all of the 31 taxi and minibus operators currently involved in the home-to-school service were invited to tender for the runs, and two bidders' conferences were held to explain the process to the operators. Of the 15 who submitted tenders, 10 were selected based on a composite of quality and price.

Maidenhead Parents were also advised by letter that a review was being carried out and were invited to attend a question-and-answer Parents In Partnership forum, attended by transport officers, last month.

The education and passenger transport teams will now be:

· informing all parents about any changes to their child's transport
· starting training sessions for all drivers and passenger assistants who work on home-to-school transport
· meeting with the operators to discuss the new routes and ensure they have all the necessary information about the pupils they are carrying.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead,