I recently received an email from a parent concerned about the safety of the vehicles contracted by the council to transport school children. The concern was raised after her daughter was on a coach that caught fire whilst transporting 53 children on a school trip. The blaze started at the rear of the vehicle, there was a 300-litre diesel spillage and a tyre explosion. Luckily all the children and adult passengers were evacuated safely.

This reminded me of a white paper the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport published in 2017 ‘School travel: How safe is your coach company?’. In this paper we raised the issue of cost versus quality in public sector procurement and how some of the most basic safety standards are overlooked when school travel is contracted. The paper highlighted some shocking coach crashes during 2017 that involved death and serious injury.

This year, in addition to the vehicle fire there have been numerous school bus crashes. Eight children were hospitalised in Shropshire after their school bus crashed and more recently a 70 year old driver lost control and crashed a coach in Cornwall whilst transporting 15 school children. Other fatal crashes hitting the headlines this year include the 77 year old bus driver who collapsed at the wheel in Coventry and the Leicester driver who did not hold a full licence to drive.

There are three minimum safety requirements to running any passenger transport operation. 1) Vehicles that are road-worthy and safe, 2) Drivers that are fit to work and properly trained, 3) A standard of driving that is not likely to cause danger to passengers or other road users. It’s as simple as that.

I accept these are austere times for councils but awarding school travel contracts to the lowest bidders or those who cannot demonstrate minimum safety requirements is simply not good enough.

Should we do more as parents? Should we ask some tricky questions? Absolutely. We care enough about the classroom environment, the security of the school, bullying, etc. The OFSTED inspectors generally see to that. However, we take the most serious risk to the safety of our children for granted and generally with no independent quality checks or inspections.

Should councils do more when appointing school travel operators? Should they ask some tricky questions? Absolutely. I certainly wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of an investigation interview asking why I awarded a contract to an operator that failed to demonstrate minimum safety requirements.