ON two recent occasions Herefordshire Council has published statements in the Hereford Times about its proposal to charge post-16-year-old disabled young people for their transport to their place of education.

While I appreciate there is a significant need to make savings, I cannot condone the manner in which the council has gone about making this proposal.

When Councillor Powell announced his review of post-16 special education he made no mention of this proposal and neither did his officers who organised two consultation meetings with parents on March 27.

This omission is significant because it was only the following day, when schools closed for the Easter holidays, that the council sent letters to a relatively small number of parents informing them of the charging proposal and inviting them to respond via an online survey. Unfortunately the link to the online survey has been unreliable, so even the few parents who were informed have found it very difficult to respond.

More disturbing, however, is what the council is claiming. For example, the council claims its proposal is to make the charging for home-school transport “fair and equal” in respect to disabled and non-disabled young people.

When making this claim, however, the council forgets that a substantially higher proportion of families with disabled children, “live in poverty, compared to individuals who live in families where no one is disabled”

according to HM Office for Disability Issues’ family resources survey 2010/2011.

There is nothing “fair or equal”

about this high incidence of poverty, but Herefordshire Council still wishes to charge these families the same as those who do not have disabled children.

In an effort to demonstrate how the parents of disabled children can pay for their child’s home-school transport, the council further states some families receive a mobility allowance as part of their disability living allowance. However, the government’s guidance is that a local authority, “may not require the learner to use this to support their transport costs to learning”

(Department for Education guidance on post-16 transport, 2010).

The same government guidance on the topic of home-school transport states that “the needs of learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities should be specifically considered” and that a local authority must take “into account all relevant matters and a failure to make arrangements would amount to a failure to meet the duty”.

When making their proposal did our local politicians believe they had taken into account all “relevant matters” and that the charging for home-school transport for disabled young people really was “fair and equal”

We know we live in very difficult times financially, but surely we should still expect our council to be principled particularly towards such a vulnerable section of our community?

RICHARD AIRD OBE, Headteacher, Barrs Court Specialist (SEN) School and College, Barrs Court Road, Hereford.