I could cry - SEND transport restricting our ability to move.

[Mamathulu]

I've lived in this bloody town for 46 years. I have hated it this entire time. It's a fairly ok place to live, but I have a LOT of negative memories attached to the place. To the point where my husband thinks it affects my mental health. He hates it here too, and desperately wants to move to a nearby town. DS3 is about to transition to SEND college, DS4 will be in SEND secondary for a couple more years. We've been trapped here for so long because DS1 and 2 had to be close to their father, and we had a nightmare situation around seeing them, so it was XPs way of controlling me/us. Then we've also been renting our current house from my parents for years. My dad now has dementia so the property has been signed over to us. We thought now would be our opportunity to move to a nearby town where house prices are slightly more reasonable, enabling us to get more bedrooms, as DH and I currently rotate having the bedroom because we keep each other awake. DS1 and 2, now adults, have nowhere to stay when they're here, and we also can't have my dad overnight, which would be a great help to my mum.
Just had DS3s Annual Review, to find out that there are no other SEND colleges in the county, but that we will lose any possibility of getting DS3 transport if we moved to another town. DH says it's fine, he'll drive him - but as DH works from home, that will entail 4 hours of driving a day. Getting DS3 and 4 to do 2 hours a day was going to be bad enough, but it's too much for him to do 4 hours of travelling for the next 3-6 years.
I could cry. I'm never fucking getting out of this place, am I?

Have a look at the rules for post 16 transport here and read your LA’s transport policy. Moving town but within the LA doesn’t prevent being eligible for transport. You can also look at out of area placements.

I'm just going from what his teacher said - apparently children who live further away than where we want to move to have been turned down for transport. There just seems to be no rhyme nor reason behind the decision making sometimes - and it seems such a gamble to take! And there's no bloody information anywhere - I tried on gov website but there are 0 send colleges listed anywhere!

But thanks for that link - from what I can tell, it's very unlikely that he'd get transport, but we could possibly fight it.

You can search for placements here. It shows 141 specialist post 16 institutions. There are also many special schools who cater for post 16 placements as well as younger pupils. You can change the filters to see schools too.

Don’t believe everything the teacher tells you. Schools and colleges (and LAs) are often misinformed about transport laws. Moving further away wouldn’t on its own mean it was lawful to remove transport. Unless of course the LA claim there is a suitable placement nearer, but even then it can be challenged.

Thank you!! I had a look and it says we could potentially have transport if we pay £570 a year, which is completely doable if we spread it over the 10 months 1 so there's hope!