Kent County Council’s £35 Kent Travel Saver rise survived scrutiny on Thursday. But the meeting left one hard question idling at the stop: when Reform says it will put “the people of Kent at the heart of everything we do”, does that include the lowest-income families being handed the steepest percentage rise?
For families waiting for school bus-pass applications to open, this is not a neat little governance story. It is September’s bill arriving early: school choice, rural routes, siblings, uniforms, grammar-school journeys and another demand on household budgets already doing their sums with gritted teeth. KCC says the rise is “18 pence per school day”. True, perhaps. But not the whole truth.
The decision raises a full-cost Kent Travel Saver pass from £580 to £615 and a low-income pass from £135 to £170. In cash terms, both rise by £35. In percentage terms, the full-cost pass rises by about 6%, while the low-income pass rises by almost 26%. Same rise. Same bus. Very different burden.
The call-in, brought by Cllrs – Rob Yates (Green), Antony Hook (Lib Dem), Paul Thomas (Restore Britain) and Mark Hood (Green), was ruled valid by Democratic Services. Its report said there was a reasonable concern that limited information had been provided to show full consideration of the varied impact of a flat-rate rise. It also said no substantive justification had been presented for choosing a flat-rate approach rather than a tiered or proportionate model.
Cllr Yates opened with the fairness point. He thanked the administration for keeping the non-statutory scheme alive, calling it “vital” to the way Kent schooling is organised, but compared the £35 rise to a flat-rate tax where a £500,000 earner and a nurse on £37,000 would pay the same amount. His point was simple enough to survive any committee fog: equal cash does not mean equal impact.
Cllr Hood said inflationary pressures were “falling disproportionately on the shoulders of those who can least afford it”. Cllr Prater said the papers showed £479,000 of inflationary pressure, while the rise was expected to raise £575,000, leaving roughly £96,000 insufficiently explained. Cllr Thomas said the decision was founded on “limited information and explanation”, with weak budget workings and no proper future-year projections.
Then came Cllr Peter (Pothole) Osborne (Reform UK), Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport. He said he was “surprised that this ever got called in”, insisted there were “no procedural errors” and said “everything was done by the book”. Chair Richard Streatfeild MBE immediately reminded him that Democratic Services had assessed the call-in as valid and that the committee could not “gainsay” that independent view.
Cllr Osborne’s first defence was brief. He said the scheme was “probably the best and the most inexpensive outside of Greater London” and repeated the “18 pence per school day” line. The chair said he had “probably” expected “a little bit more of the why the decision was made as it was”. County Hall had brought a bus ticket; scrutiny wanted the engine diagram.
The detailed explanation came from officers. Shane Bushell said Kent Travel Saver supports parental preference where families choose a school that is not necessarily the nearest one. He said commercial season tickets average around £1,026 a year, rising to £1,400 in some areas, while the scheme provides an average subsidy of £411 for full-pay passholders and £856 for low-income passholders.
He also gave figures which should have been central to the public explanation. Full-pay passes fell from 13,891 in 2021/22 to 13,193 in 2024/25. Low-income passes rose from 1,760 to 3,125. Free care-cohort passes — care leavers, children in care and young carers — rose from 3,512 to 5,733. Useful numbers. Rather late to the stop.
The administration’s strongest argument was that full-pay families had carried more of the load in recent years. Officers said the full-pay pass had risen from £360 in 2021/22 to £580 in 2024/25, while the low-income pass had gone from £110 to £135. That may explain the political thinking. It does not explain why the thinking was not set out more clearly in the decision papers.
This is where the story becomes more than untidy paperwork. Regulation 13 of the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Meetings and Access to Information) (England) Regulations 2012 requires the written statement of an individual executive decision to include details of alternative options considered and rejected by the member when making the decision. This was a Cabinet Member executive decision.
KCC’s Record of Decision did list rejected alternatives: a greater cost increase, charges for young carers and care leavers, a higher direct-debit administration fee, and greater use of Department for Transport Bus Grant. What it did not plainly record was the obvious alternative at the heart of the call-in: a percentage-based or proportionate rise.
Cllr Prater (Lib Dem) put it neatly: “If you’ve thought about it, you should have written down that you’ve thought about it and dismissed it.” Cllr Osborne (Reform UK) said it had been thought about and that “it just maintains the gap”. Mr Bushell then said officers had spent “many hours, many days” working through price options and that “there was five options, actually”. Reassuring? Perhaps. Also, rather the point.
The administration also reached for the supermarket aisle. Challenged on the arithmetic, Cllr Osborne said: “What are we going to do? Not put it up… you go to Tescos every day, a price of the loaf of bread goes up every day.” He added that the previous administration “didn’t want to take the bitter pill”. It was a revealing line: the school bus pass as budget bread loaf, with low-income families asked to swallow the crust.
Cllr Prater kept trying to separate the real issue from the fog. He said a 7.1% increase across both paying groups would raise broadly the same total income — about £570,000 — without damaging the overall budget. He was not arguing against funding the scheme. He was arguing about how the burden was divided.
When Cllr Osborne described the call-in as “purely political”, the chair stopped him again, saying members’ motives should not be questioned and that Democratic Services had accepted the call-in. Streatfeild then said something that cut through the morning: “We’ve heard a lot more information today than was in the papers.” That sentence should be pinned above every future Cabinet report like a public-sector Post-it note.
Cllr Sarah Emberson (Reform UK) tried to move the committee straight to Option A, meaning no comments on the decision, under section 16.29 of the constitution. Cllr Streatfeild (Chair) refused, saying the committee had not heard a full debate, and later relied on section 15.4, saying he was advised that his power to manage the meeting effectively and democratically overrode the attempt to force an early vote.
Cllr Emberson later argued that if the rise did not proceed there could be pressure elsewhere, including rural services. Steve Pay (Officer) said the scheme would have to continue for September, but a financial shortfall would have to be found from somewhere, probably available bus revenue, meaning “something would have to give somewhere”. That was the strongest version of the administration’s financial warning.
Cllr Sarah Hudson (Con) made one of the sharper interventions from the other side of the procedural row. She said the papers were lacking in detail, that Cabinet Members were “obviously privy to more information than is on the papers”, and criticised attempts to “subvert scrutiny debate” and push the decision through “carte blanche”. That was not a spreadsheet point. That was a scrutiny committee noticing scrutiny being treated as a nuisance.
Cllr Hood then pushed the issue beyond bus fares and into class. He asked whether the cost of free passes for young carers, care leavers and children in care really had to be met by Kent Travel Saver contributors, or whether other budgets should help. He also said selective education is “socially exclusionary”, that many grammar schools “rarely educate children from the poorest estates”, and that the flat rise could make it harder for poorer children to attend schools further from home.
That matters because the Equality Impact Assessment does not really catch socio-economic disadvantage. KCC’s own report recognises that affected families may have protected characteristics and then adds: “There is no mitigation for this implication.” That is not a reassuring sentence. It is the bureaucratic equivalent of a shrug in a high-vis jacket.
The coastal angle makes the shrug worse. The original call-in said KCC data showed more than 59% of low-income bus users come from the Marmot region, including Swale, Folkestone & Hythe, Canterbury, Thanet, Dover and Ashford. These are places where inequality is supposed to be tackled, not flattened into a £35 charge and called broadly affordable.
This is where the “people of Kent” slogan earns its test. In her first speech at County Hall, KCC Leader Linden Kemkaran said: “We will simply put the people of Kent at the heart of everything we do.” The Shepway Vox Team warned this week that Reform’s playbook risks turning “the people” into a political stage prop while the machinery residents rely on — bus fares, school transport, care, libraries, scrutiny — does the real damage quietly in the background.
Thursday gave that warning a practical example. “The people of Kent” apparently includes low-income families asked to pay the same cash rise despite facing four times the percentage hit. But when the chance came to send the decision back for another look, that concern was not put at the heart of everything Reform did. It was voted past the stop.
In summing up, Cllr Yates (pictured) said Thanet is Kent’s most deprived local authority area and that more than a third of its children live in poverty. Cllr Prater was sharper still: he said the Cabinet Member had “chosen to disproportionately penalize” families receiving free school meals, and that the report and decision were “deficient” because reasonable options considered and dismissed were not set out.
At the end, according to The Shepway Vox Team’s tally of the webcast, the committee chose Option A by six votes to four. That meant making no comments on the decision and not requiring Cllr Osborne to reconsider it. Option C — postponing implementation pending reconsideration — was rejected, with all Reform councillors present voting against sending the decision back.
So the £35 rise survives. The administration can say it protected the scheme, kept it far below many commercial season tickets and avoided pressure elsewhere in the bus budget. That is the best version of its case. But scrutiny also showed that members heard more detail in the room than had been clearly visible in the papers. KCC’s decision list now records the Kent Travel Saver decision as “Call-in expired”.
The democratic absurdity is plain. The call-in exposed missing workings, officers supplied extra detail, the chair acknowledged that the papers had not contained enough of it, and the committee then voted to make no comments. County Hall lifted the bonnet, found the paperwork rattling around inside, and decided the public did not need a repair note.
The Shepway Vox view is simple. If KCC wants to argue that full-pay families have carried too much of the burden for too long, it should say so in the papers. If it wants to close the gap between full and low-income passes, it should show the figures. If five options were worked through, the serious ones should be visible. Otherwise “fair and proportionate” becomes less a finding than a phrase waiting for a bus.
Because “the people of Kent” is not a magic phrase. It is not a flag. It is not a chamber line. It is a test. And on Thursday, when low-income families needed that phrase to mean something practical, Reform’s Scrutiny votes gave them a £35 answer and 26% increase.
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