Essex County Council's School Transport Contractor Lost Track of a Disabled Girl for Half an Hour. The Contract That Made It Possible Was Built to Cut Costs, the Ombudsman Found.
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In short. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman published a decision on 16 September 2026 upholding complaints from two Essex families whose children, both with Education, Health and Care Plans, were repeatedly let down by Essex County Council's commissioned school transport contractor, a firm referred to in the decision as "the Transport company" and named elsewhere as 24x7 [1]. In one case a driver mix-up left a mother not knowing where her daughter was for more than half an hour [2]. The decision itself discloses that the council had received more than 90 complaints about the same contractor in autumn term 2025 alone, and more than 20 further complaints in the first two months of 2026, under a "mileage contract" that changes drivers and routes week to week to cut costs [2]. The council has accepted every recommendation [1].
Essex County Council runs around 28,000 school transport journeys a day, by its own account, and almost all of them are unremarkable [3]. Two of them, investigated in detail by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, were not. Both involved children with Education, Health and Care Plans for whom a change of driver or route is not a minor inconvenience but, in the Ombudsman's own words, something that can cause real distress to children who depend on consistency and routine to feel safe [3].
A driver mix-up and half an hour of not knowing
The first complaint came from a mother referred to in the decision as Mrs K, whose daughter, L, has an Education, Health and Care Plan that records her need for predictability and her difficulty adapting to changes in routine [2]. L attends an alternative provider for bespoke therapeutic education, and the council commissioned the Transport company to get her there [2]. In November 2025, the Ombudsman's decision records, L was twice not collected from home at all. On a separate day that month, two different drivers turned up to collect her within 20 minutes of each other. Mrs K, who also had to get her son to school that morning, called the transport company's office and was told the second driver was the right one; the first driver could not be reached or located, to the point where Mrs K considered calling the police. It was more than 30 minutes before anyone could confirm that the first driver had already dropped L at her provider's reception [2].
The Ombudsman's conclusion is direct: the council's failure to ensure the Transport company ran an effective system for allocating replacement drivers "caused injustice to Mrs K", who did not know for over half an hour where her daughter was or what was happening to her [2]. Mrs K's son, M, who has autism and oppositional defiant behaviour, fared little better: the council failed to carry out a risk assessment for him or pass his needs on to the contractor, leaving Mrs K to drive him to school herself for more than two weeks until suitable transport was arranged [2].
A contract built to change every week
The reason routes and drivers kept changing is not incidental. The Ombudsman's decision explains that L and other children attending alternative providers are transported under what the council and its contractor call a "mileage contract": the contractor receives weekly schedules and settles on whichever routes are most cost-effective, which means drivers and routes differ from week to week as a matter of design [2]. The Ombudsman found no evidence that this arrangement ever accounted for L's recorded difficulty with changes in routine, and concluded more broadly that a system which assumes frequent changes "shows a disregard for the needs of children who rely on consistency and routine", and fails to show due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty, since the children placed on these contracts are, by definition, those whose needs are too complex for mainstream school [2]. Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman Amerdeep Clarke put the point to councils generally, not just Essex: "Contracts that prioritise cost efficiency over consistency can have a real and lasting impact on vulnerable children's wellbeing and their readiness to learn" [3].
The second family: missed trips, changed routes, a withdrawn session
The second complaint, from a mother referred to as Mrs X, concerned her son Y, who has autism and severe anxiety about attending school. Y received Education Otherwise Than at School, split between two providers on a timetable the council itself had agreed [2]. From September 2025 the contractor missed collections, sent different drivers daily and, on one occasion, nearly collided with a car while reversing off Mrs X's drive, upsetting Y [2]. Mrs X asked repeatedly for a consistent driver, advance notice of any change, and a risk assessment; the council's transport team replied that some changes were unavoidable because of new passengers, sickness and other staffing issues [2]. In late November, after confusion between council teams about whether to authorise the additional cost, Y's transport to one of his two providers was withdrawn altogether and he missed a session, before a council officer apologised and said the trips "should never have been cancelled" [2]. The Ombudsman found the council failed to respond to the safeguarding concerns Mrs X raised at the start of October, and failed to finalise reliable arrangements for Y for almost two months [2].
A performance plan that had already been running for a year
What makes this more than two unlucky families is a figure that sits almost as an aside in the Ombudsman's own report. The council told investigators it had been running a Performance Improvement Plan for the contractor since February 2025, with weekly monitoring meetings aimed at fixing staff shortages, poor communication and inefficient processes [2]. Some improvement was achieved by the end of that school year. Then, from the start of the new school year in September 2025, the volume of complaints rose again: more than 90 in that autumn term alone, and more than 20 in the first two months of 2026 [2]. The Ombudsman's own assessment of those numbers is blunt: "Many complaints are about similar issues to those found in our investigations. This shows that the Transport company's failings we identified have potentially affected many more families" [2]. Two complaints were investigated in enough depth to become a public decision. The council's own disclosure says the same pattern reached well over a hundred families in five months.
What the council has agreed to do
Essex County Council accepted every recommendation in the decision [1]. It must apologise to both mothers, reimburse Mrs K's mileage costs, and pay her 100 pounds and Mrs X 50 pounds in recognition of distress [1]. Within six months it must set out clear criteria for when a risk assessment is triggered, build a process for passing information from a child's EHC Plan to the contractor, strengthen the contractor's Performance Improvement Plan again, and rewrite its own guide for parents so that it complies with the January 2024 statutory guidance on school travel, rather than telling parents, as its current guide does, that the service cannot accommodate individual circumstances [1] [2]. A council spokesperson told Local Government Lawyer: "We are sorry that the experience of children and families fell short of the high standards we expect and we have already begun taking action to deliver the changes required" [3].
None of that undoes what the Ombudsman's own numbers describe: a contract designed around weekly cost efficiency, serving children for whom a changed driver is not a convenience question, running for a year with a named improvement plan attached, and still generating well over a hundred complaints in five months. Two of those complaints now have a document attached to them. The rest, on the council's own figures, do not.
Sources
- Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, decision 25 023 460, Essex County Council, 16 September 2026 (overview, finding and recommendations). https://www.lgo.org.uk/decisions/education/school-transport/25-023-460
- Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, decision 25 023 460, Essex County Council, full investigation. https://www.lgo.org.uk/decisions/education/school-transport/25-023-460?chapter=2
- Local Government Lawyer, "Investigation finds 'serious and repeated failings' in transport arrangements for children with SEND at county council", 1 October 2026. https://www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/education-law/394-education-news/101837-investigation-finds-serious-and-repeated-failings-in-transport-arrangements-for-children-with-send-at-county-council