It is good for children to be encouraged to walk to school. Health experts generally are agreed on that. Present-day youngsters, chauffeured everywhere they need to go, risk a lack of fitness and even obesity. Many of them need more exercise than they get.

So clearly, if it is a practical possibility, a daily walk to school and back would do them no harm and could actually do them a great deal of good.

However, there have to be serious doubts about the wisdom of forcing children to walk the five-mile return trip from Denholme to Parkside Secondary School at Cullingworth along Manywells Brow. Yet that is the prospect facing youngsters from up to 50 families following the withdrawal of a free school bus, which used to accommodate most of them, and the free bus passes for the rest.

Their families now face the prospect of having to pay their fares (though the service buses clearly would be unable to accommodate them all), chauffeur them to and from school, or have them walk along a route which, they say, means them having to cross roads five times because the pavement is not continuous on one side.

There have to be rules and regulations governing the provision of school transport, certainly. But surely safety issues need to be an over-riding consideration.

The parents' concerns are understandable and the Council should take them seriously. If it is not prepared to restore the free buses, perhaps a compromise could be reached under which the buses still run but the families make a contribution to the cost of getting their children to and from school.