the British Education Authority has written to drivers asking them to reduce their rates for driving school kids to school (I have never heard of such a thing) by 10% to bring down the budget allotted to the social service

The organization said the annual bill for taxi use has more than doubled over the past five years - rising from over £19.4m in 2020/2021 to almost £40m in 2024/2025.

The EA said its projected funding shortfall was in the region of £300m and that "renegotiating payments to taxi operators" was one of the savings measures it announced last month in an attempt to address the shortfall.

More than 4,600 Special Educational Needs children use a taxi to get to and from school and many schools are far away from their homes, contributes to the cost of transport.

There are not enough special schools, so some children have to travel far and this does come at a cost.

A taxi driver, Mr Scott, said he felt "let down" by the letter from the EA.  "That bond that taxi drivers had with the EA where we signed a contract and we thought we were going to service that contract for the foreseeable future, that is now broken," he said.

"Given these kids have SEN, to get them used to another taxi driver, a new car, takes a long number of weeks. This is not done overnight."

The EA letter gave taxi operators until 17 December to "voluntarily agree" to reduce their invoiced rates by 10% or the EA "will be minded to consider alternative arrangements for pupils' transport which may include using a break clause to terminate the contract(s) and re-tendering the run(s)".

"Drivers have given up work to take on a nine month contract, you are three or four months into the contract and these people are telling you we want you to take a voluntary 10% reduction and if you don't we will put it out to tender again."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp84je1n5kgo.amp