To see if you meet the requirements to drive a minibus on a regular car driving licence, you can have a look at the ROSPA leaflet: Minibus safety, under the section entitled “Entitlement to Drive a minibus”.

If it turns out that you can drive a minibus on a regular car driving licence, it is now likely that you can increase your pupils’ opportunities and experiences for LotC because you no longer need to rely on the appointed school minibus driver to be available.

But there is a problem. Although you no longer need to worry about the appointed minibus driver’s availability, you’ll need to ensure that the minibus itself is available – especially because (I can imagine) you are going to share this myth-busting email with your colleagues.

Indeed, the only option here is to acquire an additional minibus – but buying a new school minibus is expensive, to the point of being unaffordable.

Fortunately, a growing number of schools are discovering that by sharing an additional minibus with another school in the same cluster, trust, or council, buying a new school minibus becomes an option.

Better still, if you lease a minibus with Benchmark, there is the added benefit of improved cashflow (as you pay a set fee each month) and it often works out to be much cheaper than buying a minibus outright (especially if one considers the re-sale value).

Furthermore, a full maintenance programme is included, so no matter the outcome of the vehicle’s services and MOTs, the cost of repairs won’t affect the lease price.

If you haven’t leased a minibus or thought about sharing one, please do give me a call on 01753 859944 and I can talk you through how it all works.

But if you want to take a look at who we are and what we do before you call, you’ll find more information about leasing at www.minibusleasing.co.uk.