CHILDREN as young as four who’ve had to spend their first month at school walking nearly two hours there and back now have free transport.
A decision that denied some children living just under two miles from the Dell Primary School in Chepstow free school transport has been overturned after parents won an appeal on safety grounds.
The youngsters have been allowed back on their school bus from today, Thursday, October 2, after Monmouthshire County Council accepted the walking route from St Arvans, along the busy A466 Wye Valley link road, was unsafe.
Mum of three Jenny Sullivan had to walk her two youngest children from their home in the village to school which she said took around 55 minutes each way and welcomed the council’s u-turn.
She said: “I am pleased the decision has been overturned and the route has been correctly identified as unsafe. It is a shame that the council risk assessment, prior to the school summer holidays, did not identify these failures against policy to save all of the upheaval for families through September.”
Ms Sullivan said she hasn’t been formally notified the decision also means her eldest child, who has had to walk the route along the 50 mile per hour road and a shared cycle path, to secondary school will also have free transport reinstated but said a friend has been told by the council it also applies to secondary pupils. They will be issued with free bus passes to use the regular public service bus.
Children lost their entitlement to free home to school transport, from the start of the new term in September, following a decision made by the county council a year ago to change the qualifying distances.
Previously Monmouthshire would provide free home to school transport if a child lived 1.5 miles or more from their primary school or two miles from a secondary but said from this September it would use the Welsh Government’s statutory qualifying distances of two and three miles instead.
That put transport for more than 300 children at risk but the authority insisted it wouldn’t be withdrawn if walking routes were judged by its highways officers to be “unsafe”. The council had assessed the route to Chepstow before the summer holidays but an independent review, ordered after parents petitioned the council, overturned that decision.
It did however find routes from Mathern to Chepstow Comprehensive and from Caldicot to Archbishop Rowan Williams Primary School in Portskewett are safe and as a result free transport won’t be reinstated.
The council’s Labour cabinet member for education Laura Wright said: “These alterations to home to school transport demonstrate that we are listening to the concerns of parents and we will make changes when they have been shown to be necessary.
“The independent assessments of these routes to schools ensure that the council’s procedures are thoroughly tested and robust – and we have acted quickly in response to the findings. We will continue working to improve the home to school walking infrastructure, allowing people to take more sustainable journeys whenever possible.”
The council’s most recent financial report has stated savings from home to school transport, as a result of the change to qualifying distances, haven’t been realised in full due to routes being found to be unsafe.
The September report said it was anticipated £447,000 could be saved in the 2025/26 budget but the route assessments and changes to where pupils live have resulted in a £265,000 shortfall against that figure contributing to a forecast £500,000 overspend this financial year.
