Mystery cost of getting children to school

Dec 8 2008 by Andrew Baldwin, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

THE need to get children to school is paramount. Education, education – that’s the thing.

Even so, there may be many an eyebrow raised today with the news that £3.3m is being spent by Kirklees Council on getting youngsters to school.

This racks up at a bill of £19,000 for transport every single school day.

Much of the cost is for mini-buses. It is right that they should be used, especially in the case of the many children who severely disabled in some way.

But what is astonishing about all this is that the council is seemingly unable to say how much is spent on taxi fares.

Nobody should quibble about the use of taxis. They will be unavoidable in some cases.

For a local authority to admit that it does not know how much it is spending on this form of transport appears disturbing in an age when we have come to believe that everything is on record somewhere.

Labour councillor Mehboob Khan is right in saying it would be nice to know the sum.

As he almost says: How else are we to know if the money is being spent in the right way?

Tory Cabinet member Jim Dodds says he will sit down for a discussion on the way transport spending is recorded “when he has time”.

We would have thought that detailing how public money is spent calls for a bit more urgency.