Angry Derbyshire dad slams council as son with SEN left without school transport – with 18 hours notice

Ian Stone, 54, of Ripley, has been left disappointed after Derbyshire County Council failed to provide school transport for his 19-year-old son with complex needs including autism, motor dyspraxia and learning difficulties.

After a tribunal held last year, the teenager, who has an EHCP (Education, Health and Care Plan), was assigned a place in a specialist college in Sheffield with taxi transport set to be provided by the council.

But just 18 hours before the start of the school year, Mr Stone, a dad-of-one, received an email from Derbyshire County Council informing him that the authority could not arrange transport for his son.

He said: “It’s completely unreasonable.

"The council agreed to transport at the tribunal and now they are saying ‘you just have to do it yourself’ with an 18 hour notice over an email.

"How can you tell your employers that you’re not coming to work in the morning?

"There was no call, I have still not spoken to anybody other than through an exchange of emails.

"It’s just the disregard of it all. They don’t even ring you. They just say the taxi is not coming. You’ve got to take him.”

Derbyshire County Council has now replied to Mr Stone to explain that they were not able to arrange the transport due to receiving the timetable from the college late and taxi company pulling out last minute.

Mr Stone said: “They gave two explanations – they blamed the college for not sending the timetable in time and said that the taxi company turned them down at a short notice.

“But I specified the exact time the service was required for each week day.

"The reasoning about a confirmation of a timetable form the college, which has standard times, seems irrelevant.

"DCC had three an a half months to organise this transport.

"The reality is that my son has got multiple disabilities and this is not something that they should treat lightly.

"We are in a situation where we cannot work because of the travel time to get our son to his college placement, which is very difficult to explain to the employers.

"Our son has got a reading age of a seven-year-old and has got no planning ability.

“He can’t use public transport on his own.

“There’s no urgency to resolve it.

"It’s very unsatisfactory.”

Mr Stone added that his family faced a similar situation last year, when the council also failed to provide transport for his son for the first few weeks of the school year.

He added: “Last year we had three weeks when he didn’t have trasnport.

"There’s no urgency to resolve it.

"You can’t get in touch with anybody to get any answers.

"It just goes on and on.

"He is in a specialist college that costs significant amounts of money which I am grateful for – but we are in a situation where he would have missed college if it wasn’t for our relatives.”

Derbyshire County Council has been approached for a comment.