School Transport

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:45 pm on 28 June 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:45, 28 June 2022

I thank Joel James for those questions. The more detailed review of the learner travel Measure is happening at the moment, in the sense that the detailed planning for the review is being carried out over the next few weeks, and we've agreed with our local authority colleagues that the work with them on that review will follow in the autumn term. A strand in that review will be a more detailed focus on the needs of young people in post-16 education. We are reviewing with our local authority colleagues the impact of rising fuel costs on their ability to carry out their duties to provide school and college transport. It's a complex matter.

We received a letter the end of last week from the chair of the Welsh Local Government Association, Councillor Andrew Morgan. He sets out in his letter that, where local authorities are having to retender these services—sometimes because contracts have been handed back because firms aren't able to carry on trading under current conditions—the new tenders are coming in anywhere between 30 per cent to 40 per cent higher than the tenders that they are replacing. But all local authorities are in a different position, Llywydd. Some have relatively new contracts, some are relying on contracts that have been struck a long time ago, some contracts have annual renewable mechanisms in them, others don't have that at all. What the WLGA proposes is that they should collect further and more detailed information about the impact that school transport services are having to absorb from the rising cost of petrol and other transport measures, and then we will have further discussions with them as to what, if anything, the Welsh Government is able to do to assist.