Family fears loss of job after school bus scheme scrapped

Kieran Molloy, Local Democracy Reporter

A family in rural south Wales says changes to a school transport scheme could force one parent to give up work.

The purchase pass system allowed parents to buy a spare seat on council-run school buses to take their children to school if they were out of its catchment zone.

Dawl Hill, who lives with her husband and 14 year-old son in a rural part of the Vale of Glamorgan, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS):

“[My husband’s hours] are 7:30am to 16:30pm and he can’t take our son to school or pick him up.

“Neither can I, because I don’t get home till 10:00am. It’s not every day of the week, it’s a few days a week.”

Dawn Hill, 59, works shifts as a private paediatric nurse, and her husband, Michael Hill, 65, also works shift patterns in a different industry.

Due to the nature of their work, neither are available to make the school run in both the morning and afternoon.

The pair have looked into other options such as hiring a private taxi, but the costs of this would quickly add up to unaffordable levels, she said.

As Dawn is the primary earner for the household, her husband would have to be the one to give up his job.

While her husband’s work did offer some flexibility in his shifts, he would still have to give up some hours, and therefore pay, and would still be unavailable to pick up his child from school, she said.

In either case, Dawn called such an arrangement “unworkable”.

Regarding what this loss of income would mean, she said it would be “quite detrimental” to the family’s financial situation.

She continued: “We couldn’t afford it in the current day and age, we’d have to go without a lot of things.

“My son certainly wouldn’t have any even basic holidays. We would potentially even have to sell our home because we couldn’t afford the mortgage.”

While her son did walk to the bus stop in previous years as part of the purchase path scheme, without it it would double his journey to roughly 1000 yards, or just over half a mile.

The 59-year-old mother described the road as having “no footpaths, no pavements [and] no lighting” and a lot of traffic.

She said: “My husband would lose money or have to give up his job and my son would lose his independence.

“He is very upset at losing the purchase pass, he’s loved the independence, he loves getting to school and spending that time with his friends.”

As her son is entering his GCSE years, she said that moving him to a different school now would be “catastrophic”.

Dawn told the LDRS that the situation has caused her to lose sleep and has added a massive amount of stress to her day-to-day life.

A spokesperson for Vale of Glamorgan Council said: “The purchase pass scheme allowed parents to buy spare seats on dedicated school transport services where these were available. However, following changes to Department for Transport regulations, we are no longer able to offer these passes under the previous arrangements.

“Parents were informed in advance that these changes were coming into effect.”

The regulations referred to concern the Department for Transport not allowing the sale of seats in vehicles that do not meet certain accessibility requirements

However, the spokesperson continued: “The Department for Transport has recently announced that operators may be able to apply for a new exemption scheme.

“If the exemptions are granted to our partner operators, we will review whether the purchase pass scheme can be reintroduced on routes where spare seats are available.

“As with all home-to-school transport, parents who choose a school outside of their catchment area are responsible for making travel arrangements in line with the Council’s policies.”

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