North Yorkshire schools transport: Why are children being held hostage to political fortune? - Jayne Dowle

If Prime Minister-in-waiting Andy Burnham is serious about giving a fair chance to all our regions in his government, he needs to address this situation in haste. In effect, the school transport row could have a cataclysmic effect on rural communities in North Yorkshire, leading to an exodus of families. This will damage local economies and destroy a treasured way of life – and will hardly encourage other families to move here.

In 2024, the Conservative-run local authority brought in plans to restrict free home-to-school transport only to pupils’ closest schools - which is not always practical in bad weather and leaves isolated families without choice.

This is an unjust and unfair situation campaigners argue.

£3m is not an inconsiderable sum, and all councils are under pressure to cut costs. Surely however, all councils also have a responsibility to ensure not just the safety of their youngest citizens, but also their education.

If you were a parent in the remote Yorkshire Dales, how would you feel? Already angry that the council – which you pay your council tax to – couldn’t deliver a vital service, and now doubly incandescent that they cannot even get the distances to schools correct.

These distances are absolutely key, because they establish whether a child is eligible for free transport; without free transport, parents have to find a way to get their children to school themselves.

With substantial journeys involved, this is a huge and worrying challenge – especially for working parents and those with several children attending primary and secondary schools across a substantial area.

An email to campaigners School Transport Action Group (Stag) from the council has 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. It is understood that there were more than 200 appeals and 20 ombudsman cases in 2025 alone. Some parents have already launched appeals and are now left in even further limbo.

Officers will review the “potential impact of this error” the letter continued, and decisions made on what actions might be taken.

It’s the latest twist in an entire “catalogue of errors” plaguing school transport in North Yorkshire. The campaigners have previously highlighted children missing school entrance dates, unavailable walking routes and incorrect start and end coordinates.

Thousands of families are affected, pointed out Harrogate’s Liberal Democrat MP Tom Gordon in a Westminster Hall debate last month. He called for the Government to change its guidance for free school transport eligibility to be based on a child’s catchment school as well as the nearest school.

Parents are suffering sleepless nights and considering relocation, and now it transpires, the challenges they face could be based on false information. Whether these problems arose through human error, technical faults or a combination of both doesn't really matter.

Serious questions are being asked about the council continuing to pour 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, all to save a purported £3m and put children at risk.

“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,” the spokesperson added.

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

However, it’s likely that there is only so far the council will go without recoursing to “government policy”. North Yorkshire is not the only rural area affected.

Amidst all the furore of children staying up late to watch the World Cup, this inequitable situation comes against a background of politicians insisting that missing even one day of school can be detrimental to a child’s education. Over to you Mr Burnham.