Wednesday June 25th 2025
Lasswade High School
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Marie Sharp
The cost of home to school transport in Midlothian rocketed to more than 50% over its budget last year with warnings it could triple by the end of the decade.
Councillors described the overspend as ‘horrendous’ as it was given as a main reason for the council’s overall budget going more than £3million in the red.
And they agreed to set up a cross party working group to ‘motivate’ those overseeing the service to find ways to cut the annual costs.
A meeting of full council heard that the £3.1million budget set aside for the pupil transport had overspent by £1.7million in 2024/25.
The council’s chief finance officer David Gladwin said that late invoicing along with a records system which did not allow accurate estimates of the cost each year played a part in the excessive cost.
However Councillor Derek Milligan questioned why there was no clarity about the costs and pointed to internal audits and reviews which had been carried out in recent years without providing any solution to reducing the cost of the service.
He said: “We are spending millions and millions of pounds transporting pupils to and from schools here and we don’t have a grip on it.
“I understand at the start of the school year there will be some pupils dropping off and coming on but from August onwards we must have an idea what the monthly bill is.
“We know how many pupils we are moving about, it is not suddenly going up by 400 pupils or down by 100. It should not take until April to realise we have a £1.7 million overspend. We need to get someone in to take a look at this, it is a horrendous amount of money.”
Councillor Ellen Scott, the administration education spokesperson, said that she had been in a meeting with consultants where they had said costs would go up even if they ‘stood still’.
She said: “They said if we did not do something by 2030 the bill would be £10million.”
Councillor David Virgo said councillors were promised a year ago that the service would be overhauled and changes made. He said: “Obviously that hasn’t materialised.
“I wonder if it would be helpful to have a cross party group to provide some motivation sitting on home to school transport because it has gone a bit murky.”
Councillors agreed to set up the group to look into home to school transport.
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