Parents in Essex say some SEND pupils are now refusing, or freezing at, council school taxis after a watchdog found serious failings in home-to-school transport — including missed pick-ups, revolving drivers and a child who went missing for half an hour.
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman upheld complaints against Essex County Council and commissioned provider 24x7, saying arrangements caused distress and put children’s safety at risk. The council has accepted the findings and ordered a top-to-bottom review.
What the Ombudsman found
In a public statement dated 1 October 2026, the LGSCO said it investigated two separate complaints from mothers of children with Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans.
One case involved late and missed collections, inconsistent drivers, and confusion over which driver was collecting a daughter — after which she was missing for 30 minutes. The second concerned a son at an alternative education setting whose transport failed to arrive, drivers changed without notice, and safeguarding concerns went unanswered.
The Ombudsman found the council and 24x7 failed to:
carry out risk assessments for eligible children and share results with the provider
keep a reliable, consistent driver allocation system, especially for replacements
plan journeys around individual needs, including autism and other disabilities
respond properly to safeguarding concerns from parents
keep the council’s SEND transport guide for parents in line with statutory guidance
It also criticised 24x7’s use of “mileage contracts” that let routes and drivers change week to week for cost efficiency — showing “a disregard” for children who need consistency and routine, and a failure to have due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty.
Essex logged more than 90 complaints about the provider in autumn 2025 and more than 20 more in January and February 2026. Ombudsman Amerdeep Clarke called the case a “wake-up call” for councils that commission home-to-school transport: “Contracts that prioritise cost efficiency over consistency can have a real and lasting impact on vulnerable children’s wellbeing and their readiness to learn.”
See also the earlier BBC Essex report on the watchdog ruling.
Parents: “I don’t want to put my children in”
In a follow-up for BBC News, Colchester mum Donna, 40 — three of whose sons need taxis for a specialist school — said: “I don’t want to put my children in the school transport taxi, but how else do I get them to school?”
Her children “don’t want to get on the taxi”. She described last-minute cancellations for staff sickness, collections an hour late, and children stranded at school waiting for the afternoon run. Sometimes school staff drove them home; sometimes her husband left work early.
She contrasted that with the previous contractor, whose drivers were “absolutely fabulous, fully trained, interacted with the kids”.
Emma, also 40, has stopped using the scheme. Her seven-year-old daughter is severely autistic, non-verbal and needs harnesses on the journey. On the first trip with the new arrangements, she said, there was “no communication” — unlike the previous firm, which used her daughter’s first name.
Soon the girl “didn’t want to get in the transport, she was anxious, she was pacing and running, clinging to me”. Emma’s husband lost a job after bosses “didn’t understand that he needed to do the school run”; he is now self-employed and they drive themselves — a long day with another child at a school 20 minutes the other way.
Rebecca, 36, said her 11-year-old — new to secondary — wakes at night and says first thing: “I don’t want to go to school.” He has stood outside “completely frozen, not able to get into the taxi”. She claimed 24x7 often lacked information from the authority about children’s needs and seemed focused on packing as many pupils into each vehicle as possible.
Council response
Cabinet member for education, SEND and skills Sam Journet (Reform UK) told the BBC the LGSCO report was “shocking… quite frankly atrocious” and that parents “were very right to complain”.
He and council leader Peter Harris have ordered a full review of home-to-school transport and said providers who fall short will be held to account. He blamed the previous Conservative administration for the legacy, while saying the current cabinet would “take ownership” of fixing it: “We can’t say that it’s never going to happen again, but we’re doing everything in our power to ensure the service becomes the best it can be.”
Essex has agreed to apologise to the two mothers in the Ombudsman cases, reimburse one parent’s mileage when transport failed, tighten risk-assessment triggers, strengthen 24x7’s performance improvement plan, ensure reasonable adjustments are considered, and update its SEND transport guide for parents to match DfE travel-to-school statutory guidance.
The council says it provides about 28,000 journeys every school day with partner providers and has begun changes already.
Why it matters for the trade
SEND school contracts are a major strand of UK private-hire and taxi work — but they live or die on continuity, passenger assistants, risk assessments and information sharing, not just the cheapest mileage rate. For drivers and operators, the Essex findings underline that cost-led route churn can become a safeguarding and Equality Act problem as well as a customer-service one.
TaxiFeed’s wider explainer: SEND school transport — who gets it, who drives it, who pays.