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PSVAR, Home-to-School Transport and What It Means for Planning
New four-year MTE arrangements will be introduced for certain closed-door home-to-school services from 1 August 2026, subject to conditions including minimum fleet accessibility levels and the availability of compliant vehicles when required.
This applies equally to local authorities in England and Wales; PSVAR is a DfT responsibility and is not devolved.
What is PSVAR?
The Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations 2000 (PSVAR) set minimum accessibility standards for buses and coaches. The regulations cover physical features including wheelchair spaces, floors and gangways, seating, steps and handrails, with the aim of ensuring disabled passengers can travel safely and with dignity.
For home-to-school transport, operators who cannot yet meet full PSVAR requirements can apply for a Medium Term Exemption (MTE). Exemptions are not a get-out, they come with conditions, including a requirement to progressively increase the proportion of compliant vehicles in the fleet each year, and to provide a fully compliant vehicle on request without charging a premium.
From 1 August 2026, the current round of MTEs expires and new four-year exemptions begin for closed-door home-to-school services. Rail replacement services will see no further exemptions and must comply in full from the same date.
The regulations themselves are published on legislation.gov.uk. For a plain-English summary of the new MTE arrangements from 1 August 2026, Backhouse Jones Solicitors have published a useful overview of the changes.
Backhouse Jones Solicitors have also published clarification on what this means for new vehicles from 1 February 2027. Operators holding an MTE26 exemption will need to ensure any new vehicles purchased or registered from that date are PSVAR-compliant across their entire operation, not just on home-to-school services. That means the registration date of a vehicle, and whether it was delivered before or after 1 February 2027, becomes relevant data for local authorities to hold against each vehicle in the contracted fleet.
The challenge for local authorities
Most local authorities hold learner and fleet information in separate places - learner records in one system, operator fleet details somewhere else, with no easy way to bring them together when planning routes and allocating services.
A learner who needs a wheelchair accessible vehicle cannot simply be put on the nearest available service. The vehicle has to be right, and that has to be verifiable.
Responsibility sits with both the local authority and the operator. Operators need to keep their contracted fleet PSVAR compliance data current. Local authorities need access to that same data to verify compliance and ensure learners with accessibility needs can be accommodated at the point of allocation.
How MoveSmarter helps
MoveSmarter is building vehicle management into the platform with this in mind. Because the system is multi-tenant, operators can log in and will be able to keep the PSVAR compliance status of their own fleet up to date directly. Local authorities will then be able to run compliance reports across all contracted operators at any time, seeing which vehicles used for home-to-school services are fully compliant, partially compliant, or holding an exemption.
The next step is to surface that information during route planning; when a service is being allocated, the transport team can see whether the vehicle matched to it meets the accessibility needs of the learners travelling on it.
The liability for PSVAR compliance applies to both the operator and the commissioner of the service. Local authorities cannot rely on an operator's exemption to avoid their own obligations. Having clear, reportable data on fleet compliance is not just useful, it is part of managing that liability.