Burley-in-Wharfedale case mentioned at committee

Bradford Council’s Young People and Education Improvement Committee last night voted in favour of the study.

It will examine the implications of giving free bus passes to children who live outside a three-mile radius of their school when another school is located closer to their homes but outside the district.

Council regulations at present state only pupils who live more than the three-mile distance to their nearest school are eligible for free transport – that excludes Ilkley Grammar School pupils who live in the Holme Grove and Endor Crescent areas of Burley-in-Wharfedale.

Children there are 2.7 miles away from Guiseley School, which had places available when they started secondary school, and so have been refused free travel.

Parent Sally Portz, who presented a petition to Bradford Council in July last year asking for a change in regulations, told the committee that as she lived in the school’s priority one area she had presumed her son would be eligible for a free bus pass.

She said: “Our children were declined a free bus pass to travel to school, consequently they have to pay to get on at the same bus stop and travel to the same school as their friends who travel for free.”

Council officers recommended the regulations remain the same, saying it would be difficult to predict the numbers of pupils who would take up free bus passes if eligibility for them was widened.

The committee, which will send its suggestions to Bradford Council’s Executive Committee, expressed its dismay at the time taken by the executive to resolve the issue, which had twice been deferred.