Electric vehicles for home-to-school in Bristol
City council gives approval for purchase of 29 electric vehicles for home-to-school travel (HTST) fleet
Members of Bristol City Council’s Children and Young People Policy Committee have voted unanimously to commit £1.8m of investment to expand the local HTST fleet with new electric vehicles. The money will cover the vehicles themselves and the drivers need to run the service.
Photo courtesy of Bristol City Council.
By law, Bristol City Council is required to provide eligible children and young people with home-to-school travel. Eligibility criteria, as set out in schedule 35B of the Education Act 1996, include children with special educational needs, disabilities or mobility problems.
Over recent tears, there has been an increase in the numbers eligible children in the Bristol City region, putting pressure on service providers. What’s more, until now the city council has lacked an appropriate transport fleet of its own. To meet its statutory obligations to provide HTST, vehicles have been commissioned through a framework of external contractors, sometimes at considerable cost.
The new investment aims to meet the rising demand for appropriate HTST provision while at the same time improving service reliability, reducing emissions and costs, and contributing to improving the city’s air quality. The fleet may also be used to support the work other council departments, meaning even greater citywide benefits.
The agreed plan involved purchasing 29 electric vehicles over the next two years, as the right vehicles become available and as drivers are recruited.
Cllr Christine Townsend, Chair of the Children and Young People Committee at Bristol City Council, says: ‘This commitment to invest in the home-to-school transport is much needed to ensure we are delivering sustainable, and vital services for our SEND families. This investment represents a practical approach to ensuring we are supporting those families in such a way that also enables us to meet our ambitions of a net-zero council and city.’
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