EVALUATION OF THE STAG OPERATIONAL MODEL

Following North Yorkshire Council’s resolution on 24 July 2024 to abolish discretionary catchment-based travel in favour of nearest-school entitlement, official forecasts treated the policy shift as a frictionless administrative exercise. The School Transport Action Group (STAG) developed an independent financial audit model to stress-test the authority’s numbers against the physical realities of rural transport operations.

The model is architected around four foundational principles:

• Symmetrical Auditing: The model accepts the official £4,263,445 mature savings figure and phases it across the Council's own 7-year implementation schedule, testing whether it withstands operational delivery costs on a level playing field.
• Deterministic Transparency: The engine uses transparent arithmetic without stochastic black boxes or subjective multipliers. If replacement vehicle and appeal inputs are set to zero, the model outputs the Council’s exact projected surplus.
• Break-Even Auditing: Instead of asserting a single immutable forecast, it functions as a sensitivity engine, allowing officers and elected members to identify the exact tipping points where policy costs exceed benefits.
• Tripartite Parity: The core algorithm is maintained across three platforms—the primary interactive web model, the executive dashboard, and a native Excel spreadsheet workbook—all producing 100% identical outputs to the penny across all 7 operational years.

Official council modelling assumed linear cash deductions: when a pupil loses eligibility, their cost disappears from the ledger. The STAG model proves that gross savings do not translate into net reductions due to three operational friction mechanisms:

Under statutory guidance, local authorities cannot retrospectively strip transport from pupils already midway through their secondary education. The policy applies only to new Year 7 admissions.

• Year 1 (2025/26): Only Year 7 is affected (102 entitled pupils under baseline 70% opt-out).
• Year 2 (2026/27): Year 7 + Year 8 affected (204 entitled pupils).
• Year 3 (2027/28): 306 entitled pupils.
• Year 4 (2028/29): 408 entitled pupils.
• Year 5–7 (2029–2032): Full secondary stack mature at 510 entitled pupils.

This structural lag means existing bus contracts must remain operational for legacy cohorts while new bespoke vehicles are commissioned concurrently for younger siblings travelling in different directions.

North Yorkshire covers over 3,200 square miles. Displaced pupils cannot be aggregated into a single hypothetical coach without creating 2-hour journeys that breach statutory travel limits. The STAG model breaks the displaced population across 50 rural feeder zones:

• Isolated Fleet (25%): Pupils on single-track lanes or remote farms inaccessible to buses require individual licensed taxis (capacity: 3, £150/day).
• Consolidated Fleet (75%): Pupils in accessible villages consolidate dynamically based on threshold volume:
  • Under 8 pupils per zone: Standard taxis (£150/day, cap 3).
  • 8 to 16 pupils per zone: 16-seat minibuses (£250/day).
  • 17+ pupils per zone: Commercial coaches (£500/day, cap 50).

The Council budgeted virtually nothing for parental appeals. In reality, withdrawing travel rights triggers a multi-stage statutory appeal progression:

• Stage 1 (Internal Review): 45% of affected families appeal (£150 officer review cost).
• Stage 2 (Independent Panel): 50% of rejected appellants escalate (£750 independent hearing cost).
• Stage 3 (Local Government Ombudsman): 20% of rejected appellants escalate (£1,400 legal and investigation cost).

Evaluating the STAG model under baseline settings (190 school days per year; framework contract rates of £150/day for taxis, £250/day for minibuses, and £500/day for coaches) produces the following multi-year trajectory:

• Operational Grounding: Framed around commercial vehicle day-rates and driver shifts rather than abstract pupil units, aligning with YORtender procurement realities.
• Capturing the Tipping Point: Proves that negative operational gearing wipes out coach savings with just a few replacement taxis.
• Statutory Rigour: Reflects mandatory requirements of the Education Act 1996 regarding cohort phasing and unsafe walking routes.

To maintain analytical objectivity, the model adopts simplifying conventions that warrant balanced interpretation:

• Absorption Capacity: The baseline assumes all 102 net qualifying pupils require newly commissioned contracts. In practice, a portion may be absorbed by existing contracted vehicles that retain spare capacity.
• Sensitivity Interpretation: The −£4.80m deficit is a baseline scenario output, not a guaranteed prediction. Its value lies in showing how fragile paper savings are. Even if replacement fleet costs are moderated by 50%, annual replacement costs still reach approximately £2.4m/year, severely eroding the Council's recurring savings target.

The STAG Operational Audit Model provides a necessary and methodologically sound audit of North Yorkshire Council’s Home to School Travel Policy.

Where official council models relied on gross savings abstractions—assuming frictionless fleet reductions, zero replacement vehicles, and minimal dispute overheads—the STAG model establishes a dual-sided appraisal grounded in the legal constraints of the Education Act 1996 and the procurement economics of rural transport.