Buckinghamshire County Council’s Cabinet approved the new policy to charge for home to school transport this week.
The changes are required to meet the 50% cut in budget over a 10 year timescale that the council faces.
All the Leighton Buzzard Observer and Dunstable Gazette’s neighbouring Bucks villages will be affected.
The council has until now avoided wide-scale charging but can no longer avoid this. This decision follows 12 months of consultation and nearly 40 meetings with parents and headteachers, to ensure their concerns were taken into consideration when the final policy was drawn up.
Another factor is that when schools convert to academy status, as many have done or are in the process of doing, they are able to set their own catchment areas. The changes being made now will safeguard the council from any unforeseen cost increases which might arise in future as a result of catchment area changes.
The key points of the new policy, which do not affect SEN or low income families, are:
>> To transport pupils to their nearest school (subject to the existing distance criteria). This is the national legal requirement.
>> For those living closest to a county boundary, pupils will be offered transport to their nearest Buckinghamshire school unless there is an existing admissions arrangement or significant pattern of parental choice for a non-Buckinghamshire school.
>> The fare will be £10 per week, or £1 per journey, which is still heavily subsidised by the council in order to try to make it as fair and accessible to pupils as possible and to maintain the bus capacity so as to avoid congestion.
>> Changes will be phased from September 2012, for the new Reception and Year 7 intakes.
>> There are existing non-statutory entitlements for free transport that are being phased out between September 2011 and August 2017. But in recognition of this, from September 2012 these pupils, although keeping their free transport, will be required to pay an administrative charge of £2 per week to cover the cost of arranging it.
>> For pupils transferring from infant schools at the end of Key Stage 1, normal rules apply. In addition, transport may be offered to the linked Junior or Combined School as these schools will have a planned intake.
Still under consideration is a discount system for families with more than two children. Cllr Appleyard will confirm details of any new scheme when parents are notified of their child’s home to school entitlements on April 30.
Mike Appleyard, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Education and Skills explains: “In any scenario there are going to be significant groups of people affected and we cannot find a solution that has an equal impact across both upper and grammar schools. National legislation is developed by Central Government and does not take into account systems set up in local areas.
“We understand that more grammar school than upper school pupils will be affected by these changes and regret this. However, the way the legislation is written limits our options.
“If we offered transport to the nearest grammar school, charges for home to school transport would need to be extremely high and the likely impact would be that fewer people would want to purchase a seat, resulting in the income from seat purchases being significantly reduced. This would then require us to find alternative methods for making savings, which may impact on other areas of educational services.”