Concerns as Midlothian pupil transport costs rise by £1m despite extra funds

Council officers came under fire after the cost of transporting pupils to school rose by nearly £1m despite a huge increase in its annual budget.

A meeting of Midlothian councillors this week heard the budget for pupil transport was expected to be £937,000 over its allocated funds this year.

The projected overspend came despite elected members agreeing to increase the budget by over £1m in a bid to ‘break even’.

Councillor Derek Milligan called on officers to produce a detailed report breaking down how the costs had continued to come in far above the amount set aside despite the extra funding.

He said: “We need a report to explain what has caused this because we have lost control of it. This will be a £2m rise in pupil transport in two years. This council can’t afford that without cutting drastically its services.”

Earlier this year councillors were told last year’s pupil transport costs which had been expected to be £3.1m in total rocketed by more than 50 per cent with a £1.7m overspend.

Concerns were raised about a lack of clarity over the costs and a continued overspend which had been recorded year on year.

Speaking at this week’s council meeting, Councillor Milligan said: “For the last three years pupil transport had an overspend of just over £1m. In this year’s budget, we increased it by £1m to break even, so where does this additional nearly £1m come in? Every time we see this, it gets worse.

“There is not suddenly this huge amount of people who are getting transport, or if there is what is it we have done that has actually brought that about.

“We have not suddenly got nearly £1m of additionality here unless the contracts we have agreed have increased massively either the usage or the prices.”

Mr Milligan said he had heard from some drivers that a ban on allowing anyone to sit in the front passenger seat had been introduced which meant a driver collecting three children and an escort now required a second taxi to take the third child and a second escort to accompany them.

“For example, some of the drivers tell me someone has taken the arbitrary decision, for whatever reason, that they cannot use the front seat in a taxi for anybody.

The council’s chief financial officer David Gladwin told the meeting he would ask for a report on the cost analysis of the service to be brought back to councillors at a future meeting.

And he said the comparison made at the moment was against the actual cost of transport in the previous year and a projected cost for this year adding there had been an ‘imperfect budget’ due to a lack of data.