West Yorkshire leaders to decide on school bus consultation

The CA wants to ensure its travel to school support is sustainable for parents, carers and students across West Yorkshire, ensuring their needs are at the heart of future plans.

A seven-week public consultation is expected to take place from April 23 to June 11 this year, with any resulting changes to services not expected to be introduced until September 2026 at the earliest.

Mayor of West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin said: “It is vital for us to make sure our children and young people have safe, secure and prompt routes to and from school.

“That is why I am urging as many parents, students and schools as possible to get in touch and take part in the consultation when it starts at the end of April – so we can create a new, region-wide travel to school strategy that best serves West Yorkshire.”

Chair of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority Transport Committee Cllr Susan Hinchcliffe said: “The region’s school bus policy is currently a mix of various agreements with different council areas – the result has been that parts of our region have differing levels of support from the Combined Authority.

“That is why it is important to create a new school bus strategy for the whole of West Yorkshire, which will help us with our plans to create a better-connected region.”  

A document, set to go before regional decision-makers next week, sets out the need to have a new policy for the provision of dedicated school buses for secondary school students, which encourages people to walk or use public transport, but looks to provide school buses where this is not possible.

The new strategy will be developed by the CA alongside its other work to create a fully-franchised West Yorkshire-wide public bus network by 2028.

The decision on whether to hold the consultation will be made by members of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority committee at a meeting on Thursday, April 3.   If agreed the consultation documents and engagement will be published on 23^rd April.

Notes to editors

• The CA currently helps local authority partners fulfil their legal duty to provide free home to school transport for eligible pupils.
• It also provides additional services for fare paying pupils at a cost of nearly £19m per year.
• The West Yorkshire Combined Authority has arrangements in place for around 328 buses, which carry on average 20,000 pupils per day, and forms around 29 percent of the total spending on extra bus services across the region.
• The existing arrangements for school bus services in the region were last formally reviewed by the CA’s Transport Committee in July 2019.