Councils in Scotland have forked out close to £90m on taxis in the last three years, new figures have revealed.
Following an FOI request to all 32 authorities in the devolved nation, it has emerged that at least £89,271,251 was spent over the last three financial years with the true costs likely to be higher as some councils did not respond.
While much of the spend was related to statutory duties such as school transport and social services, cash for private hire vehicles was also spent on environmental work, transporting staff and taking meals to pensioners.
Unsurprisingly Scotland’s largest local authority, Glasgow City Council, was also the biggest spender with an annual outlay of around £5m as it ran up a bill of £15,023,891 over 2012/13, 2013/14 and 2014/15.
Almost £13m of this was associated with the council’s education and social work services due to its statutory obligation to transport pupils and service users to either their placement or school.
A Glasgow City Council spokesman said: ‘The vast majority of these costs for each financial year relates to the transport of pupils and young people with additional support needs to their school or placement. It should be borne in mind that individual needs are matched to a specialist school which is often not close to the child's home.’
South Lanarkshire Council was the second highest spender with £14,239,762 since 2012, similarly most of the cost was associated with education.
West Lothian ran up a bill of £12.3 million, East Lothian £4.8m, Perth and Kinross spent £9m and Aberdeen City Council spent £6.7m.
At the bottom of the list came Orkney, Inverclyde, Aberdeenshire, which spent £104,840.18 between them.
The news comes after Transport Network reported that Cambridgeshire CC was considering purchasing its own fleet of minibuses because of the taxi costs associated with school transport for special needs children.
