Council To Look At School Transport Policy

This month Wrexham County Borough Council has introduced a new School Transport Policy (read the PDF here). The aim of implementing  the policy is to ensure that the Council meets its statutory duties, as detailed in the Learner Travel (Wales) Measure 2008 – as passed by the National Assembly for Wales.

In practice the the new policy will ensure that free transport will be available for all primary pupils who live more than 2 miles from their nearest suitable school and for all secondary pupils who live more than 3 miles from their nearest suitable school.

Cllr Michael Williams, Lead Member for Children’s Services and Eduction proposed that a ‘task and finish group’ be setup in July. The aim is to review the previous decision made in July 2010 to adopt the new policy and to find out if the policy is being implemented ‘fairly and equitably’ across the county borough.

This was explained to Wrexham.com as looking at issues such as equidistant schools, as travel is based on distance from homes to schools so if there are two schools the same distance away issues can arise. Generally it seems that the issues arise around the ‘edges’ of catchment in terms of the policy and that is one area this ‘task force’ is going to look at.

Cllr Williams said “there is not too much wrong with the existing policy but it may need tweaks” .

This is up for discussion on the Exec Board meeting on September 11th.