Monmouthshire free school bus appeal awaited despite term starting

Parents whose children lost their free school transport after a council policy review don’t know when an appeal will be determined – a week after the new term began.

Some are walking about 55 minutes each way to and from school with young children while buses pass them with “empty seats”.

Mother-of-three Jenny Sullivan, 42, said the decision has split her village in two where some children still qualify for free travel in neighbouring streets.

Monmouthshire council said its policy was changed in line with the Welsh government’s statutory qualifying distances to save £700,000, but it wouldn’t require children to walk where no safe route existed.

Last term, Ms Sullivan’s family received free transport but it was withdrawn when the new school year started as the qualifying distance was extended from 1.5 miles to two miles for primary school children and from two to three miles for secondary school pupils.

Ms Sullivan from St Arvans said she currently drives or walks her two youngest, aged 10 and seven, to Dell Primary in Chepstow but she said it was “physically impossible for young children to walk that distance twice a day, every day”.

She is also concerned about her 13-year-old who also walks the route to high school along a shared cycle path and next to a 50mph road.

“It’s not really safe,” she said.

“Emissions are also a worry as they are being more exposed to that if they are having to walk it every day.”

She said children “cannot understand why their friends living in the next street within the same village still have a bus space when they do not”.

“The policy has split the village in half.”

Ms Sullivan said her employer had been flexible, allowing her to collect her children from school, while awaiting the outcome of the appeal.

However, she said she may also have to consider after school childcare costing about £25 a day for two children in the meantime.