Post 16 school transport

I thought that some of your readers might be interested in my ongoing dealings with Cheshire East and the subject of post-16 school transport. Hopefully it may help some of them come September.

I first made enquiries with Cheshire East at the end of last year about the post-16 transport. It was an ongoing conversation, eventually between myself and Sarah Tunstall, that sadly ended up going round in circles!

To cut to the chase, academic year 13/14, C.E charged £890 for a post 16 bus pass. My concern was for academic year 14/15. There are no doubt several of your readers who, like myself, live in a very rural location. Our closest public transport is nearly 3 miles away, there are no pavements and the roads can be lethal. We are nearly 7 miles from Brine Leas and my 2 children have qualified for a bus pass since year 7.

In September, my eldest will move in to year 12 and no longer be eligible for a free bus pass. (I wont go into the Politics of this one now!)

Now, I have had several protracted discussions with CE school transport over the last year or so. I have always found them to be rather pleasant, extremely sympathetic to the post-16 situation, but their policy remains an immovable object, or rather their Policy Makers do!

£920

For those of you who will be effected by this in September, you might be interested to know that a Cheshire East bus pass for post 16's (should they have a spare seat available on your route) is £920! (not too far off the cost of adding a 17 year old to your car insurance!)

You may also be pleased to know that this can be paid in 3 installments of £340, £340 & £240! I was told on one of my telephone calls that such a high cost was to help claw back some of the costs to the council for all routes in general!

However, when I mentioned that I was prepared to pay a 'FAIR PRICE' for a bus pass, and that surely it would be better to fill the bus with students paying somewhere near the equivalent of those able to use public transport, around £400 per year, they could see my point, but the Policy says NO!

Ridiculous

Now this cost, for us personally, works out at more than twice what it would cost me to put my eldest in the car and drive him to school behind the bus that his younger sibling is sitting in! How ridiculous is that? Even CE staff appear think it's ridiculous, but the Policy Makers think not! Not a great advert for their Green policy though!

Reluctant to add to the unecessary addition of another car to the school run, I had an idea that perhaps I could buy a bus pass from the coach company directly. Sadly not the one on our route.

Next I decided on one more attempt to talk to C.E transport. Nope, still an immovable policy, but the second person I spoke to did at least have the cost of a 14/15 pass handy, funny that as the person I'd spoke to a couple of days earlier told me it wouldn't be decided for another month or so!

School Service Bus Route

Having gleaned a piece of closely guarded information from a good source I was this time also able to ask where the nearest 'School Service Bus Route' was to my home address. Now, interestingly, the person who didn't have a clue that the costings had already been worked out, had never heard of a service route! Neither had I until a few days ago, but after a lot of digging, someone came up with this helpful information!

I spoke to a very nice gentleman at Routemaster buses, who will be running a couple of school services from September. He explained the routes in detail relating to us, and the costings.

The nearest service route for us is a mile down the lane, but at least my child will not have to run the gauntlet of crossing the A530. Instead, for a 'Walk on Price' of £1.50 a journey, £12 for a 10 trip ticket or £400 for an annual pass, my eldest can now get to Brine Leas, without me adding to the carbon footprint, and without us having to take out a second mortgage.

So, in essence then, if you need post 16 transport, for either Malbank, Brine Leas or even Reaseheath, you might actually be able to find a school service route close to where you live. You just have to ask Cheshire East Transport department to tell you the details of companies involved near you. They are obliged to furnish you with names and numbers.

Helpful

I hope that this is a help to those that find themselves tackling post 16 transport in September.

The Cheshire East contract bus will continue to stop at my gate to collect my youngest, but C.E will lose out on a fair price, preferring instead to have zero revenue from my eldest, who will be driven the mile to the bottom of our lane (and before you say he can walk/ride his bike, yes he could, but the drivers are crazy where we live and I value his safety too much to risk it) where he will get on the Routemaster service bus and we shall continue to do our bit for local business and keeping the carbon footprint down!

Berny Lunt.

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.