As a foster carer and adopter, I’ve spent more mornings than I care to count coaxing my 13-year-old daughter into her uniform and then into the car. She has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, the UK’s most underdiagnosed neuro-developmental condition, which leaves her with a brain wired for impulsivity, memory lapses and emotional storms that no local school can contain. Each day, I drive her across several counties to the only specialist placement that can meet her needs. Four hours a day, every week day.
While I’m grinding through the traffic, taxpayers are footing bills that could fund whole classrooms. Councils and schools spent a record £2.26 billion on special educational needs and disabilities – ‘Send’ – transport last year. That’s more than double the 2015 figure, fuelled largely by a surge in spending on taxis. Cab firms have cottoned on to the money-making venture. In Hampshire, they charge £86 per pupil per day on average; in North Yorkshire, £78. Camden Council paid more than £900 a day for transport for one pupil. Operators sign multi-year contracts that guarantee tidy profits, but they’re not the villains – they’re simply capitalising on the state’s failure. The real scandal is the failure itself, and how some families take advantage of it.
I’ve seen the game from both sides because I have also driven Send children for a local private operator. The job was supposed to be simple: arrive, wait three minutes and mark it as a no-show if the child didn’t appear. But anyone who’s rocked a traumatised child through the night can’t drive away from youngsters who want to go to school but don’t have a parent invested enough to help them out the door. As a foster carer, I’ve looked after children who had to sleep on beanbags or whatever soft surface they could find. These children need all the help they can get.
Take nine-year-old Sam (not his real name). Every morning, I’d pull up to his house only to see a pair of small eyes peering through the letterbox. Still in his pyjamas, he’d linger in the hallway while his mother slept upstairs. I’d gently coach him through the letterbox flap. ‘That’s it, Sam, socks first, love. Left foot, then right.’ Sam’s mother wasn’t exhausted from shift work. She didn’t have to be at a hospital ward or a warehouse at dawn. She was at home. Yet the council was paying £50,000 a year to chauffeur her son to school. Multiply that journey by several thousand and the crisis becomes clear.
Sam’s mother also had a shiny Motability car – a scheme where new vehicles are leased with taxpayer funds – gathering dust on the driveway outside their house. The state pays £2.8 billion annually for these cars, ostensibly for the disabled, making Motability the largest single customer for new vehicles in Britain. Since 2022, 11,000 claimants have been ejected from the scheme for abusing it. Then there is the problem of families double-dipping by claiming a car then requesting taxis for their convenience.
These aren’t isolated anecdotes. I’ve worked with families where the routine verges on comic: idling engines, children having to manage their school run alone while parents wave in dressing gowns from the hallway. One girl with autism – a Motability van parked out front – used to text me from inside the house: ‘Mum’s still in bed, sorry! Can you wait for me?’ Most parents, of course, don’t behave like this – but the ones who do cause resentment in council chambers and on taxpayer forums.
Cab firms in Hampshire charge £86 per pupil per day; in North Yorkshire, £78
Meanwhile, a booming online economy is making access to benefits easier than ever. Private GPs, who abound on the internet, openly advertise that they will ‘diagnose’ disabilities for benefit claims for as little as £49. A few clicks for the online consultation, a PDF letter, and the wheels of entitlement begin to turn. Enhanced personal independence claims for mobility have doubled since 2019, while benefits influencers swap tips on how to secure approvals. There’s no mechanism to claw back the money on unused leased cars or when transport is quietly outsourced to a council-funded taxi.
I’m not claiming that it’s a simple story of fraudsters and freeloaders. For every family gaming the system, there are several struggling to do the best for their child. Picture a single dad on a zero-hours contract, or a nurse whose shifts clash with the school bell. A four-hour daily school run isn’t an option for people like these; it would mean a lost job, a mortgage default or a family pushed into claiming Universal Credit. The system for Send transport, conceived under the 1996 Education Act, was intended to protect these families, providing free transport when journeys are unmanageable.
And for some, these journeys really are getting more unmanageable. One in five children now has a special educational need, and specialist placements are scarcer than ever. Send provision is chronically short. For many, like my daughter, it means longer and longer school runs – a daily haul across the country because local schools either can’t or won’t meet their needs. Councils are buckling under the cost: one in ten now risks insolvency, rising to one in six if trends continue.
So how do we fix this without punishing the vulnerable? We could begin with the Motability loophole: if a leased vehicle is suitable for transport, use it or offset the taxi claim. No ifs, no buts. Introduce means-testing or needs-based caps, and invest in local-authority-funded specialist schools so that children aren’t shipped across counties just to learn. Perhaps it’s time to deal with the growing industry of fast-track online diagnoses, too.
I’ve spent years crouched on kitchen floors, coaxing my daughter out of hiding after a day that’s pushed her too far, cleaning up smashed plates, calming 2 a.m. storms and wiping tears from both of our faces. My sympathy for parents of children with Send isn’t abstract: it’s lived – in bruises, broken sleep and occasional despair. But I’ve also sat outside front doors where public money is being abused. For the sake of those who quietly shoulder the load, and for the taxpayers who fund it, it’s time to restore some fairness and common sense.
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