A £12m overspend on school transport in Surrey must be tackled “to avoid adversely impacting services”, council officers have said.
The situation has been made more difficult as “pressures anticipated for 2023/24 are significantly higher than in recent financial years”.
The main driver for the overspend has been significant inflation, policy changes and the need to maintain priority services, Surrey County Council officers added.
Closing the gap, they said, would require "a fundamentally different approach".
The council has a duty to ensure 160,000 children can get to school.
Of those, about 9,600 qualify for home to school travel assistance.
In 2021/22, 4,185 children used the scheme, up from 3,452 the year before.
Between 2017 and 2020 the figure never topped 3,000.
