School Transport Chaos
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Posts
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I can sympathise with all these parents but just to say transport can get it right sometimes, my son applied for a bass pass just late last week for college and received a pass on Saturday. As we only caught the late twitter message from College Cambria re no more yellow college buses and we were unaware how to proceed, a quick phone call to Wrexham transport, we followed the excellent instructions and helpful advice and received a pass just three day later – excellent service and credit where it due.
@tmack 14836 wrote:
Don’t get me started on the transport section of Wrexham Council. My son started his first year at Coleg Cambria yesterday and still hasn’t received his bus pass to even show the bus driver or even know what time/where the bus picks up. I’ve been paying for public transport for the last two days with still no indication of when he’s likely to receive it. We completed the forms for a bus pass on the night he registered for his A levels at the college itself, way back in January. When two weeks before the start of college he still hadn’t had the bus pass I phoned the transport department to be told they hadn’t received his application form. They blamed the college and said it had happened to lots of students. They took all his details over the phone and told me not to worry as they would arrange for one to be posted. Come last Friday he still hadn’t received it. I rang the transport department again to be told his name was familiar and they were sure they had posted it but if not it would definitely be posted 1st class Friday. Guess what? Still no bus pass! As an aside, the transport department had also told me that I had to contact the transport provider myself to find out times and pick up points. They warned me the bus company was difficult to contact?! I have been trying to contact them for nearly three weeks and cannot get through. Why the heck the council can’t provide a timetable goodness only knows seeing as they award the contracts! I’ve rung the council again this morning to complain and they’ve said someone will ring me back. Well that was 4 hours ago and its no surprise that that hasn’t happened. Utter shambles.
Sounds very familiar
School Transport has been reviewed on a number of occasions by ‘specialist’ external consultants along with the other vehicles used for transportation in the Council such as Social Services and Youth Service. In total I believe there have been three reports commissioned including one by TAS, John Mooney Associates and one other yet nothing seems to have been to implement and start controlling the costs.
Perhaps if some of the recommendations within these reports to set up a not for profit community transport business. One of the reports was proposing significant transport costs for officers and Council Members. There are a number of schemes operating like this around the country that not only provide vehicles for council use but for other community organisations, mechanical apprenticeships and other job opportunities.
What has not been mentioned in the original postings is that children attending a non Welsh school which is the same distance away in most instances are not entitled to free school transport.Criteria for use of LEA transport Transport Criteria for the Minimum (Statutory) Provision
The LEA provides free transport:Where a child resides over two miles walking distance from their nearest appropriate primary school;
Where a child resides over three miles walking distance from their nearest appropriate secondary school.The key word is appropriate which indicates a pupil attending a school with a linguistic or faith requirement is then given access to free transport. not 100% sure about the faith element)
https://www.wrexham.gov.uk/assets/pdfs/education/school_transport/itu_prem_sec_notes.pdf
99DylanJones….You raise very valid issues, but they are not relevant in this instance. I don’t think its in dispute that these children are entitled to free school transport, just that they were not carried due to the lack of the physical possession of a Bus Pass which is shameful.
My son was due to return to coleg cambria on Monday ,by Friday last week we had not received a letter with a bus pass or details of the times of the bus,the company or which bus stop to use. I enquired with a neighbour who has a son who was starting his first year at coleg cambria, he too had not received any details. I telephoned the college and was told that buses are now being arranged through the council school transport section. After numerous attempts to get a reply I spoke to a gentleman who said that he recollected seeing my sons name on an application form and thought a bus pass was in the post, he said he would check the records and ring me back, needless to say he didn’t and when I tried to ring him back later the same day, no reply.
It resulted in me taking my son, my neighbours son and a girl from over the road, who had also no idea the buses had changed and thought the usual yellow bus would be taking her.
After dropping them off at college I went to Contact Wrexham where they tried to ring through to school transport, they had no reply, I was supplied with their number and I could not get a reply. I went to the Guildhall and used their phone, I was able to get through and was asked if I could get to the Industrial estate to collect the pass or wait a few days for them to be posted. Needless to say I went to pick up the pass, and my neighbours pass, I was told which bus company to look out for, the bus number and the times.
I was lucky as I had the time and transport, but there are many who are not able to do this. It appears the whole system needs looking at as the administration of this is appalling. Surely this should be sorted out before they return to school/college. Six weeks school holidays is a regular occurance as is changeing schools so it is not a one off situation.The not answering the phone thing was a very big issue. I’d need to report to them to discuss various important things and more often than not the phone would just ring and ring and ring with no answer. Parents and schools would have the same problem.
I’m not sure exactly how many people they have working up there, but I only ever spoke to the same two or three people at a time. They were often dismissive and on occasion down rig rude, they never apologised for mistakes (of which there were too many to list), they don’t pass messages onto each other, they go off on holiday or take breaks or go on training and they wouldn’t delegate their work to anyone else. It was an utter nightmare, and that’s before you get to the amount of money they were wasting….
I’m not at all surprised to see in today’s leader they are passing the buck and trying to avoid accepting responsibility with no ology, if you caused a mess like that in any other job you’d get a warning at least.
As an ex bus driver, I have been observing from a safe distance the ‘chaos’ surrounding school transport, and whilst I agree it does seem to have been a bit crazy but as always, bash the council is the order of the day.
Now whilst council’s have a statutory commitment to provide transport for ‘qualifying pupils’, I wish parents would accept responsibility for their side of their childcare bargin. It is ‘parents responsibility to present / and meet their child at the bus stop, in a timley and correct manner’. If they had taken responsibility for their own childrens saftey, instead of just abandening them on the street then they wouldn’t have been ‘LEFT STRANDED BY THE COUNCIL!!’ If they had also taken notice of info given out by primary schools, checked before hand or even looked on the council’s website [where all this info is available] instead of sitting on their hands all summer and in a lot of cases not even knowing what day their schools went back, it would have caused a lot less hassel – namely for them and their little angels. As for the idiots in the transport offices, the 2 or 3 useless staff their probably have one phone each, presumably one pair of hands and thousands of irate parents trying to ring them. You do the maths!!
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