Decision details

LOP&S - CYP: 2223022 - Service Transformation Fund – Additional funding for Travel Assistance Service

Decision Maker: Director of Learning, Opportunities and Skills

Decision status: Recommendations Approved

Is Key decision?: No

Is subject to call in?: No

Purpose:

The Travel Assistance Service has a number of upcoming changes and projects to oversee and implement during the 2022/23 Financial year. These include:

- Creation and implementation of a new Home to School Policy and the governance around this

- Creation and implementation of a new Dynamic Purchasing System Contract and the governance around this

- Embedding familiarising the new Synergy system and creating new ways of working following the change to this system at the end of February 2022

- Implementing a new system for procurement and invoicing and payments to contractors through a collaboration with ADAM Transport Systems and the associated governance.

Additionally this service has seen the number of pupils requiring specialised transport rise by 14% since the start of the COVID pandemic and over 25% during the past 5 years with a corresponding increase in workloads.

Decision:

To utilise funding identified through the Service Transformation Fund of £53k To provide additional temporary capacity into the Travel Assistance Service in the form of:

- 1 year fixed term FTE Team Manager (Grade 8) April 2022 to March 2023

- 1 year fixed term FTE Transport Officer (Grade 5) April 2022 to March 2023

Alternative options considered:

ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS CONSIDERED AND REJECTED
This temporary assistance will assist the team to manage the projects and transformations required through 2022/23 and also provide an indication of the level of additional capacity which may be required on a more permanent basis within the Travel Assistance service to maintain the high levels of customer service with ever increasing workloads.

Without this assistance there will be insufficient resource within the team to continue to manage all of the customer service, workloads and projects required to move the team forward

Publication date: 29/06/2022

Date of decision: 28/06/2022

Accompanying Documents: