Taxi Driver Online

Well the Telegraph has gone to town with this

Lots of maps and graphs and the like on the original source (which is paywalled), but this should be more than enough for most of us on here, I'd guess...


Taxi boss makes nearly £10m a year driving special needs children

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/1 ... -children/

Andy Mahoney’s 24x7 Group has taxpayer-funded contracts with 96 councils in England



A taxi firm boss is making nearly £10m a year from government contracts by taking special needs children to and from school, The Telegraph can reveal.

Andy Mahoney is the chief executive of 24x7 Group, the only major company in England that exclusively provides school transport services for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send).

These services are ultimately funded by the taxpayer.

The family-run business has seen revenue soar in recent years, reaching £95.7m in 2024 amid a national Send crisis, with the company recording a gross profit of £20.8m and operating profit of £8.6m last year.

Mr Mahoney owns 24x7 Group alongside Ashley, his son. He also runs a holiday camp for Send pupils in the Algarve in Portugal, and was awarded an MBE for services to special needs children and their families in 2021.

Public social media posts show the taxi mogul lives in a 17th-century manor house on an 18-acre estate, which was bought by 24x7 Group’s investment arm in 2018.

24x7 Group wrote off a £373,000 loan it provided to a separate firm run by Mr Mahoney which hosts evening events at the eight-bedroom manor.


Andy Mahoney’s 17th-century mansion doubles as 24x7 Group’s headquarters and hosts wedding as well as evening events (Image: The Telegraph/Archive.is)

Recent events have included a “night of clairvoyance” with a spiritualist medium and an interactive murder mystery dinner.

There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing and the company said the revenue increase reflected a steep rise in demand for Send transport in recent years.

The taxi firm’s financial accounts state that its customers are mostly local authorities, who have a statutory duty to pay for Send support for children who need it.

Councils must help children get to school if they are under eight and live more than two miles away from school, or older and live more than three miles away. The obligation applies to all children and typically can mean covering the cost of a bus fare or train ticket.

However, a rise in the number of children with mental health conditions or complex needs has led to a sharp increase in spending on private transport, with some pupils requiring up to two escorts to accompany them to and from school.

Soaring demand for special needs support over the past decade has led to the total taxpayer bill for school Send transport tripling to nearly £2.3bn last year, with the figure expected to climb further.

A Telegraph investigation revealed last month that in one case, a council was spending as much as £950 a day to get a single child to and from school.

Some Send taxi contracts have included round trips of up to 368 miles – roughly equivalent to the distance between Watford and Edinburgh.

Parents have insisted that a lack of support in mainstream schooling means they often have no choice but to seek out specialist help for their Send children even if this is far from home, resulting in lengthy and undesirable journeys to and from school.

Labour has acknowledged that the sector is in crisis and has promised to overhaul the current system in a Send white paper expected later this year, which will seek to plug extra help into mainstream schools.

But rocketing demand for Send support and a shortage of specialist places has proven a lucrative opportunity for taxi firms, many of which have recorded towering revenues in recent years.

Telegraph analysis of council contracts found that most local authorities rely on sprawling networks of as many as 250 local taxi firms to shuttle Send children to school, with just a handful of companies operating country-wide.

Freedom of information (FoI) requests to councils in England showed that 24x7 Group is the biggest of these, with the company’s website also stating that it now operates in 96 local authorities.


Mr Mahoney’s company operates a fleet of more than 4,500 vehicles (Image: The Telegraph/Archive.is)

The transport company, which was founded in 2001, has rapidly expanded in recent years on the backdrop of increased Send demand, with annual revenue more than quadrupling from £22.5m in 2021 to £95.7m last year.

Operating profit has increased from £5.2m in 2021 to £10.2m in 2023 and £8.6m in 2024.

The company recorded a gross profit margin of 8.9 per cent last year, although it posted a loss after tax of £510,000 in 2024 after its total liabilities increased. 24x7 Group previously recorded profits after tax of as high as £8m in 2022.

The company told The Telegraph the increase in operating profit over the past five years was “a reflection of the expansion the group has undertaken from working with seven councils in 2020 to currently 96 councils”.

24x7 Group’s latest financial accounts show it boosted driver numbers by nearly 50 per cent in a single year to reach 5,542 in 2024, helping the firm cater for more than 11,000 Send children.

The firm said the business seized on the Covid pandemic as an opportunity to buy up more vehicles and train new drivers to meet demand.

It said: “24x7 Group is the largest provider of Send school transport in England. We are committed to providing the best school transport at the lowest possible cost to the council, this can be evidenced by our average cost per child on school transport.

“As we take many of the country’s most vulnerable children to school, it would be expected that our average cost per child would be higher than the average of Send sector transport costs, we are in fact below the average cost per child across the sector.

“We work closely with Government departments and councils to find ways of reducing the cost to councils at a time when the number of Send children are increasing and Council budgets are stretched.

We have responded to the Government’s request for evidence on the Send crisis and advised on ways of achieving a 25 to 30 per cent cost saving on current spending.”

Mr Mahoney said in a recent podcast that he started 24x7 Group after his previous transport business began to secure ad hoc Send taxi contracts, and a local council worker asked for his help meeting increasing demand for school transfer services.

The company now operates a fleet of more than 4,500 vehicles, consisting of cars, people carriers and wheelchair accessible vehicles.

24x7 Group is an outlier as the only dedicated Send school transport company thought to be operating nationwide, with councils forced to seek help wherever they can get elsewhere to plug the gaps.

A Telegraph investigation last month found that some local authorities have been using ambulances to transport Send children to school as they scramble for help with soaring levels of special needs pupils.

Figures released to The Telegraph by more than 100 councils through FoI requests showed Lincolnshire County Council spent £3.8m last year on Send transport provided by Amvale Medical Transport Ltd, a private ambulance company based in Scunthorpe.

The council spent a further £18m on Send transport contracts awarded to 145 other companies in 2024 including 24x7 Group, with the money mostly going to local taxi companies and individual drivers.

A pupil in Cambridgeshire, meanwhile, travelled 48 miles to and from school every day in an ambulance at a cost of £66,500 a year.

Cambridgeshire County Council is one of many councils that have also been relying on airport transfer services and luxury minibuses to transport children with special needs to school.

The local authority spent almost £1.5m on a single airport transfer firm to ferry Send children to lessons last year, with Durham, North Yorkshire, Surrey and Warwickshire among those relying on similar services.

For those being ferried to school every day, the highest total was in East Sussex, where the council spent more than £160,000 last year transporting a single pupil with special needs over a distance of 25 miles each day.

By comparison, the Government spends £8,210 on an entire year of schooling for a pupil at a mainstream state school.

Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, told The Telegraph that the current system was “broken”.

She promised to tackle the issue by giving “every child the chance to attend a good local school which meets their needs and lets them thrive alongside their friends”.

The increase in school taxi costs reflects a broader rise in the number of pupils being awarded certificates entitling them to Send support from local councils, which are known as education, health and care plans (EHCPs).

A record 639,000 children in England currently hold an EHCP following an 11 per cent rise in the year to January, with the figure almost doubling over the past six years.

A further 1.3m pupils receive Send support but do not have an EHCP, meaning around one in five of all pupils at state schools in England are currently receiving some form of additional assistance.

The recent increase in EHCPs has largely been driven by three types of need: autistic spectrum disorder; speech, language and communication needs; and social, emotional and mental health needs, which include ADHD.

The Government is expected to unveil a shake-up of the current model in a white paper to be published this autumn, which is expected to urge for a refocus on Send support delivered through mainstream schooling.

A Department for Education spokesman said: “This Government inherited a Send system on its knees – we are engaging closely with children, parents and experts as we develop plans to ensure all children get the outcomes and life chances they deserve.

“Children shouldn’t have to travel miles for an education, which is why we’re already investing £740m to create more specialist places in mainstream schools – helping to make sure all children can attend a good local school, which meets their needs and lets them learn alongside their peers, close to home.

“The path to our country’s renewal runs through our schools, this Government will build a system where every child can achieve and thrive.”

Is this the firm that makes the driver and vehicle stats for Uttlesford Council look hugely out of kilter compared to a standard local authority?

For what it's worth, this is 24/7's submission to the TransComm investigation, written by Mr Mahoney himself. For obvious reasons, the focus is slightly different from most of the submissions, although I just had a quick skim through

https://committees.parliament.uk/writte ... 48408/pdf/

Any changes to the cross-border rules would have a massive effect on this firm.

The ABBA process would simply ruin their business model, as would the 'intended use' suggestion, and the Scottish way.

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IDFIMH

A broadly related article on the Spectator website, that I wouldn't have bothered reading apart from the fact there's a huge generic photo of a taxi rooflight illustrating the piece.

And there's also a reference to the author having driven for a local 'private operator', which I assume means private hire operator. Apart from that, and the now familiar stuff about a few outlier contract figures, it's not particularly trade-related, although I'm sure a few on here will identify with some of the stuff in it

And also guaranteed to get some on here a bit het up


The parents gaming special educational needs

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the ... nal-needs/

https://d0qpnx0851jnl1.archive.is/tRW6Z ... a8eaf.webp

As a foster carer and adopter, I’ve spent more mornings than I care to count coaxing my 13-year-old daughter into her uniform and then into the car. She has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, the UK’s most underdiagnosed neuro-developmental condition, which leaves her with a brain wired for impulsivity, memory lapses and emotional storms that no local school can contain. Each day, I drive her across several counties to the only specialist placement that can meet her needs. Four hours a day, every week day.

While I’m grinding through the traffic, taxpayers are footing bills that could fund whole classrooms. Councils and schools spent a record £2.26 billion on special educational needs and disabilities – ‘Send’ – transport last year. That’s more than double the 2015 figure, fuelled largely by a surge in spending on taxis. Cab firms have cottoned on to the money-making venture. In Hampshire, they charge £86 per pupil per day on average; in North Yorkshire, £78. Camden Council paid more than £900 a day for transport for one pupil. Operators sign multi-year contracts that guarantee tidy profits, but they’re not the villains – they’re simply capitalising on the state’s failure. The real scandal is the failure itself, and how some families take advantage of it.

I’ve seen the game from both sides because I have also driven Send children for a local private operator. The job was supposed to be simple: arrive, wait three minutes and mark it as a no-show if the child didn’t appear. But anyone who’s rocked a traumatised child through the night can’t drive away from youngsters who want to go to school but don’t have a parent invested enough to help them out the door. As a foster carer, I’ve looked after children who had to sleep on beanbags or whatever soft surface they could find. These children need all the help they can get.

Take nine-year-old Sam (not his real name). Every morning, I’d pull up to his house only to see a pair of small eyes peering through the letterbox. Still in his pyjamas, he’d linger in the hallway while his mother slept upstairs. I’d gently coach him through the letterbox flap. ‘That’s it, Sam, socks first, love. Left foot, then right.’ Sam’s mother wasn’t exhausted from shift work. She didn’t have to be at a hospital ward or a warehouse at dawn. She was at home. Yet the council was paying £50,000 a year to chauffeur her son to school. Multiply that journey by several thousand and the crisis becomes clear.

Sam’s mother also had a shiny Motability car – a scheme where new vehicles are leased with taxpayer funds – gathering dust on the driveway outside their house. The state pays £2.8 billion annually for these cars, ostensibly for the disabled, making Motability the largest single customer for new vehicles in Britain. Since 2022, 11,000 claimants have been ejected from the scheme for abusing it. Then there is the problem of families double-dipping by claiming a car then requesting taxis for their convenience.

These aren’t isolated anecdotes. I’ve worked with families where the routine verges on comic: idling engines, children having to manage their school run alone while parents wave in dressing gowns from the hallway. One girl with autism – a Motability van parked out front – used to text me from inside the house: ‘Mum’s still in bed, sorry! Can you wait for me?’ Most parents, of course, don’t behave like this – but the ones who do cause resentment in council chambers and on taxpayer forums.

Meanwhile, a booming online economy is making access to benefits easier than ever. Private GPs, who abound on the internet, openly advertise that they will ‘diagnose’ disabilities for benefit claims for as little as £49. A few clicks for the online consultation, a PDF letter, and the wheels of entitlement begin to turn. Enhanced personal independence claims for mobility have doubled since 2019, while benefits influencers swap tips on how to secure approvals. There’s no mechanism to claw back the money on unused leased cars or when transport is quietly outsourced to a council-funded taxi.

I’m not claiming that it’s a simple story of fraudsters and freeloaders. For every family gaming the system, there are several struggling to do the best for their child. Picture a single dad on a zero-hours contract, or a nurse whose shifts clash with the school bell. A four-hour daily school run isn’t an option for people like these; it would mean a lost job, a mortgage default or a family pushed into claiming Universal Credit. The system for Send transport, conceived under the 1996 Education Act, was intended to protect these families, providing free transport when journeys are unmanageable.

And for some, these journeys really are getting more unmanageable. One in five children now has a special educational need, and specialist placements are scarcer than ever. Send provision is chronically short. For many, like my daughter, it means longer and longer school runs – a daily haul across the country because local schools either can’t or won’t meet their needs. Councils are buckling under the cost: one in ten now risks insolvency, rising to one in six if trends continue.

So how do we fix this without punishing the vulnerable? We could begin with the Motability loophole: if a leased vehicle is suitable for transport, use it or offset the taxi claim. No ifs, no buts. Introduce means-testing or needs-based caps, and invest in local-authority-funded specialist schools so that children aren’t shipped across counties just to learn. Perhaps it’s time to deal with the growing industry of fast-track online diagnoses, too.

I’ve spent years crouched on kitchen floors, coaxing my daughter out of hiding after a day that’s pushed her too far, cleaning up smashed plates, calming 2 a.m. storms and wiping tears from both of our faces. My sympathy for parents of children with Send isn’t abstract: it’s lived – in bruises, broken sleep and occasional despair. But I’ve also sat outside front doors where public money is being abused. For the sake of those who quietly shoulder the load, and for the taxpayers who fund it, it’s time to restore some fairness and common sense.

Written by
Rosie Lewis

There was some lengthy journeys here in Kent when I was in the p/h business. one chid was taken by cab every Monday from the Romney Marsh to Devon and back again on Friday afternoon. That's got to be a good 400 mile round trip for the driver, twice a week. One SEND plac near evenoaks had at least 3 cars from Romney Marsh every day, cars having to return home during the day or sit there all day. that's a 90 mile round trip, so 180 miles a day. I reckon there must have been 60 p/h and hacks serving that place. It's easy to see how the annual bill is so much. For some of these kids there's simply no local schools that can cope for their needs.

I cut my teeth in the bus industry doing SEND as part of the day's work. I didn't particularly enjoy that part of the business.

In Kent, about 18 years ago, the tory-run council looked at cutting taxi costs so started their own limited company. It also provided bus and coach hire, gardening services and temporary staff. It was an abject failure, the bus company was up in front of the Traffic Commissioner for maintenance problems, swapping O licences between their 2 bus companies and a host of other "dodgy" deals. It was never discovered how much they lost. I know I got a medium 5-figure settlement under TUPE when they took over my own school bus service. The council executive who was a director didn't even know he was a director of the council-owned companies!! Their taxi business was a failure as well as they discoversd the plethora of different licencing authorities in the county.

our local council has more than a dozen companies which pay councillors as directors. The massive losses by the property developing company were quite the scandal. Why do politicians and civil servants think they know how to run a business !

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Because they only lose 'other peoples money' - not their own.