Review and changing personal transport budgets
You must notify the Council immediately about any change in your circumstances that may affect your eligibility for transport assistance and/or your personal transport budget payment.
Examples of changes of circumstance include:
- If you move address or change school or school site
- Change of timetable that affects your child’s school hours or days
- Long term absences (5 consecutive school days or more)
To inform the Council of any changes send an to email SEND Approvals.
If you fail to notify the Council of any change to your circumstances, which the Council later decides would have had the effect of reducing or ending your child’s entitlement to payments, the Council may terminate your personal transport budget payments and will seek to recover any monies that you should not have received for the period in which you failed to notify.
If you are unsure about whether a change of circumstances will affect the payments, you are advised to discuss this with the Council. If any change to your circumstances means that your child’s eligibility to transport assistance is withdrawn, then the personal transport budget payments will cease.
Change of payment
The amount of personal transport budget payment may also be reviewed, adjusted, suspended or terminated if:
- Your child’s attendance falls below 90%
- Your child regularly arrives late at school in the mornings
- Your child arrives at school in an unfit state to learn
- The travel arrangements that have been put in place for your child using the personal transport budget are deemed to be unsuitable or unsafe
- Your child accesses short break stays away from the family home
- There is a change to national legislation and/or the Council’s policies
- You have more than one child or other member of the same household each receiving a personal transport budget and attending the same school or another school nearby.
Review of personal transport budget arrangements
Each personal transport budget will be in place up to the end of the academic year after the arrangement has started. It will be reviewed on a regular basis and you must reapply for each new academic year.
As part of the personal transport budget review, the Council will contact your child’s school to request their attendance records to confirm their level of attendance, and that they are able to fully access their learning opportunities. Once this information has been received and the transport review has been completed, any decision to adjust or withdraw the personal transport budget will be given to you in writing.