North Yorkshire Council admits 28 schools were incorrectly mapped amid controversial transport policy

The Conservative-run local authority brought in plans in 2024 to restrict free home-to-school transport to pupils’ closest schools, which it said will save £3m a year from its budget.

North Yorkshire Council said this is required to cut back on costs, and puts it into line with other local authorities around the country.

It means that calculations around distances are pivotal to working out whether pupils should be eligible for free transport.

An email to campaigners School Transport Action Group (Stag) from the council has now revealed that the location of “28 schools was amended in the live system in error … with effect from 21 May 2026”.

The council said this has not affected secondary school admissions, but would affect primary school ones and any in-year eligibility decision, including appeals, after that date.

“Council officers are reviewing the potential impact of this error and a decision will be taken shortly as to what action should be taken,” the letter said.

It would not disclose all of the schools, however said that two related to appeals over home-to-school transport decisions that were heard yesterday.

These were Tadcaster Grammar School and Scalby School in Scarborough. Despite the mapping errors, the appeals went ahead.

Victoria Rothwell, whose twins Annabell and Finley, 12, had their free transport to Tadcaster taken away, said: “I’m hoping this is [the start of] a snowball effect of logical reanalysis of the whole policy quite frankly.

“In the meantime, I’ve had money taken out of my account that I know is unjust.”

Stag has called on the council to publish the full list of schools and pause the appeals process “until these mapping irregularities have been fully clarified and addressed”.

The campaigners have previously highlighted missing school entrances, unavailable walking routes, incorrect start and end coordinates and inconsistencies within the council's mapping system, which they have called a "catalogue of errors."

A spokesperson said: “Whether these problems arose through human error, technical faults or a combination of both doesn't really matter.

“The result is the same. After two years of trying to make this policy work, parents no longer trust the system on which school distance calculations are based."

“Every time another error is uncovered, the council's instinct has been to withhold the very information that would allow parents to independently check the calculations for themselves. That's not how you build confidence in a policy that depends entirely on accurate measurements.

“How much longer will the council continue pouring time and public money into defending a policy that families warned from the outset was overly complicated, prone to error and ill-suited to a rural county?

“At some point someone simply needs to press the common-sense button, restore catchment-based transport and let children get to their local schools in the way North Yorkshire families have done for decades.”

It is understood that more than 1,000 families have been affected, with more than 200 appeals and 20 ombudsman cases in 2025 alone.

Furious parents have been protesting against the policy as it has meant children going on dangerous, ungritted roads over the tops of the Dales in winter or forsaking their free buses to school.

It’s been a particular issue in the Upper Dales, where previously youngsters largely travelled by coach along low-level A roads to Richmond.

Tomorrow, the Liberal Democrats have put forward a motion at full council to try and end the policy before it affects applications for the 2027 school year.

North Yorkshire Council’s assistant director for children’s partnerships and sufficiency, Jo Heaney, said: “We identified and are correcting an administrative error relating to school entrance gate data held within our Geographic Information System (GIS), which is used as part of the assessment process for home to school travel eligibility.

“The error occurred on May 21, 2026, when updated school entrance gate information that was being prepared for implementation in September 2026 was inadvertently added to the live system ahead of the planned timetable.

“As a result, we are removing those amendments to ensure fairness and consistency and that all children’s eligibility is assessed using the same set of data.

“At this stage we believe two families are affected and they will be contacted directly, we are continuing to review eligibility assessments and all late applications to ensure that any potential impact is identified and addressed promptly.”