Vacant Seats Payment Scheme (VSPS)

If your child is not eligible for free or subsidised transport to school, it's possible that they could be offered transport through our Vacant Seat Payment Scheme (VSPS). This means that if there are empty seats on our vehicles which transport eligible pupils, we may be able to offer those seats to pupils who aren't eligible. Unfortunately we can't offer VSPS seats on public buses or trains.

You do have to pay for VSPS seats. We would charge you 3 times a year and you would have to pay before we would send you a ticket.

From September 2011 the charges are:

• £165 for the Autumn term 2011
• £165 for the Spring term 2012
• £160 for the Summer term 2012

If your child has a VSPS seat, we can't guarantee that the seat will always be available for them. Each term we check the number of available seats and your child's VSPS seat may be withdrawn if:

• a child who is eligible for transport assistance needs it
• we decide to stop running a particular transport service or decide to run a smaller vehicle

If this does happen, you will need to make your own arrangements for your child to travel to and from school.

We can only offer VSPS seats after the term has started when the children who are eligible to receive assistance have been allocated given their seats. In the meantime, you will need to make your own arrangements for your child to get to and from school.