Sendtra: Home-to-School & SEND Transport Management

One system for routes, drivers, passenger assistants and every daily journey — built for council transport teams.

Sendtra is NHZ Global's transport management platform for local authorities that run home-to-school transport for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), adult social-care transport and similar contracted passenger services. It replaces spreadsheets, printed run sheets and phone calls with a back-office web application and the Sendtra Driver Android app, so the transport office can see every journey as it happens. It is licensed annually to UK council transport services and supported from our Slough office.

Why councils need it

SEND transport is one of the most sensitive services a council provides: vulnerable passengers, contracted drivers and passenger assistants, and routes that change whenever a child moves school, an address changes or a vehicle is off the road. Managing that on spreadsheets means nobody knows where a bus is, parents ring the office, run sheets go out of date within days and safeguarding checks depend on memory. Meanwhile SEND transport budgets are under more pressure every year, and auditors expect evidence.

What Sendtra does

Back office (web)

• Passengers, schools and addresses with pick-up/drop-off instructions, mobility and medical notes, and parent/carer contacts
• Routes and daily schedules — build routes, assign vehicles, drivers and passenger assistants, and publish the day's manifests in one step
• Changes without chaos — swap a driver, cover a sickness or re-route around a closure and every affected manifest updates
• Live journey board — which routes have started, where each vehicle is, who has been picked up and dropped off
• Safeguarding controls — only checked, in-date drivers and assistants can be allocated; expiries flagged before they lapse
• Reporting — journeys, mileage, no-shows and incidents for contract monitoring, invoicing and audit

Sendtra Driver (Android app)

• Today's manifest with passengers in order, addresses, notes and navigation stop to stop
• One-tap confirmation of each pick-up and drop-off, with time and location recorded
• No-show, incident and delay reporting sent straight to the office
• Works offline and syncs when signal returns
• Published on Google Play; runs on standard Android phones or council-issued devices (see our council device management)

Benefits

• Answer parents instantly — "where is the bus?" becomes a glance at the live board, not a call to the driver
• Evidence for every journey — confirmed pick-ups and drop-offs, timestamped, for contract monitoring and safeguarding
• Fewer paper run sheets and re-keying — one change in the office reaches every driver
• Contract control — mileage and journey data to check operator invoices against what actually ran
• Fixed annual licence — no per-driver or per-journey fees, with UK support included

Implementation

1. Discovery — current routes, contracts, data sources and the reports you need
2. Data load — passengers, schools, routes and operators imported from your existing spreadsheets or system
3. Pilot — a handful of routes with real drivers for two to four weeks
4. Rollout and training — office team and driver induction sessions
5. Support — annual licence with updates and UK helpdesk

Sendtra is procurement-friendly for local government: we can supply through your standard supplier onboarding, and we already hold supplier status with London borough councils. Read the Sendtra council case study.

Frequently asked questions