Post-16 children's transport costs

Dodcott Parish Council wishes to highlight the current financial inequalities being faced by parents with post-16 children attending further education at local schools and colleges.

Dodcott Parish Council has been fighting this issue for the last 18 months and has made little headway with Cheshire East Council on this matter. I include below a recent e-mailed response from our local County Councillor Rachel Bailey which summarizes the stage we are at.

As one of several rural parishes, Dodcott felt that is was now necessary to raise the profile of this matter via AudlemOnline so that we can try to establish whether residents in and around Audlem are experiencing a similar issue and, hopefully, gain additional support.

This is the response from County Councillor Bailey: "Thank you for your email; Cllr Cooper is quite correct with regard to my comment that I would look to incorporate Rural Proofing as a policy within Cheshire East. I anticipate that report will be ratified by CE Cabinet in November.

"In addition to Rural Proofing, Cheshire East Council is currently developing a Rural Statement, which will outline our commitment to our rural communities and the priorities for rural areas over the coming years, as identified by our rural stakeholders, which will help our rural communities to be sustainable.

"We now hold regular Rural Summits bringing together local rural experts and champions and we plan to hold a Rural Summit in early 2014, on rural transport issues and we will be sending an invite to this, to all Town and Parish Councils.

"Cheshire East Council is an active member of the Local Government Association's Rural Commission and has also recently become of a member of SPARSE, joining with other Unitary Authorities to lobby for fairer funding. We have just this week given some feedback to the national 'Rural Access Learning Group' (RALG), who has recently published a report on their findings into the availability and funding of transport to schools and colleges.

"Cheshire East has seven Local Area Partnerships, who actively engage with local communities to address local issues. Nantwich Local Area Partnership (LAP) has a very active Rural Transport Group, who on Wednesday 2nd October met with local transport providers.

"I asked Sharon Angus-Crawshaw, the Nantwich LAP Manager to raise Cllr Cooper's concerns at this meeting. In addition I would encourage Cllr Cooper (or another member of the Parish Council) to join the Nantwich LAP Rural Transport group, as this provides a good way to work with others to look at ways of addressing local concerns. I will endeavour to keep you updated."
Kind regards
Rachel Cllr Rachel Bailey
Portfolio Holder for Children's and Families Cheshire East

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.