SOUTHEND Council has launched an investigation into its school transport for special educational needs children after a flood of complaints from parents.

The council is reviewing a ten year contract with Vecteo, a partnership between the council and London Hire to see if the terms of the agreement have been broken by the new service, which has seen vulnerable children waiting hours for school transport.

The council said the inquiry would review the circumstances surrounding the launch.

Laurie Burton, councillor responsible for children and learning, said: “The home to school transport service experienced significant issues when it launched in September this year, but improvements have been made following this challenging period.

“The contract for this service is with Vecteo and is for an initial ten year period, with the option to extend it by a further five years. The service continues to work through an improvement programme as it heads towards the high-quality service that the children in our borough deserve.”

Mr Burton added: “The council has started an internal review into the circumstances behind the challenges, and this will lead to a ‘lessons learnt’ report being produced so similar issues can be avoided in the future.

“The council has also asked its internal audit team to undertake a review of Vecteo’s current performance levels against the specific requirements of the contract and this is currently in progress.”

The service had been run by 24x7 school transport before being handed over to Vecteo following a procurement process.

The council owns 49 per cent of the joint venture company.

Problems emerged from the start with parents reporting children with autism being left waiting hours for school buses or asked to get into taxis alone without assistants during a the handover of the system.

Tony Cox, leader of the council’s Conservative group has a special educational needs child. He said: “ If we did pull the plug on the contract at the moment there wouldn’t be a transport servic