For councils & commissioning teams
Council SEND transport
For commissioners and transport teams. We are pre-licence, so this is not a tender response — it is what we are building and how we would work with you.
The operator model
Velgo is being built as an operator, not a booking app with a logo on it. Routes are planned in the office, assigned to named adults, and held to a plan that a council officer can look at. Escalation has a route and a named owner rather than a phone number that rings out. We are building for SEND home-to-school work first, because it is the work with the least tolerance for a driver who does not turn up and the most need for the same face on a Tuesday as on a Monday.
Live visibility & counts-only reporting
Authorised council users see the routes they commission as they run — which are out, which have completed, which need attention. Reporting is deliberately at count level: numbers of routes, journeys, changes and issues, without turning a child's day into a case study that circulates by email. Where a specific child's information is genuinely needed, it is available to the people entitled to see it, and that access is logged. Reporting that respects a child's privacy and reporting that satisfies a commissioner are not in tension; they just have to be designed that way from the start.
Safeguarding
We will describe our safeguarding process when it has been signed off, and not before. What we can describe now is the shape the software gives it: route information is limited to the adults on that route, communication is office-led so there is a record, concerns have an escalation path with an owner, and access to any child record is audited. We are not going to publish a list of checks and approvals in advance of holding them. When we are licensed and our process has been through review, this section will say exactly what we do.
Reliability & continuity
Transport goes wrong on the days that are already difficult — weather, traffic, a driver off sick in the same week a school changes its finish time. We are not going to claim that will not happen to us. What we are building is the part that follows: cover considered before the morning rather than during it, the office informing the school and the family rather than each finding out separately, and a record of what was decided. Judge an operator on the second Tuesday in February, not on the brochure.
Working with us
The useful first conversation is a short one about scope: what routes, what area, what your team needs to see, and how often you want to review it. We are pre-launch, so we are not responding to tenders yet — but understanding what commissioners actually need is the reason to talk now rather than later. If SEND transport in south-west London, Manchester or Surrey is something you are re-thinking for the coming cycles, we would like to hear how.
Working together
What a first engagement involves
We have no case studies, because we have not run any routes. Rather than illustrate with a scenario we made up, here is what working with us would actually involve.
Step 1
A conversation about scope
What routes, what area, how many children, and what your team currently finds hardest about the transport you commission. Half an hour is usually enough to know whether there is anything here for you. We would rather find that out early than run a process.
Step 2
What you would need to see
Commissioners differ on this more than operators expect. Some want a live view of every route; some want a monthly count and a phone number that answers. We would rather build to what you actually check than hand you a dashboard that goes unopened.
Step 3
A route, run properly, before a child is on it
New routes get driven before they carry anyone — timings, access, where the vehicle can actually stop, and whether the handover point works at the hour it will happen rather than at the hour it is convenient to visit.
Step 4
A review rhythm you set
Weekly at the start, because the first fortnight is where the problems are, then whatever cadence suits once it is steady. The point of the review is to catch the small recurring irritation that nobody thinks is worth a phone call.