How the Council have almost got it right on Denominational Transport

At Tuesday's meeting of the Wiltshire Council Cabinet the Conservative authority performed another spectacular u-turn and abandoned their plans to withdraw all funding from denominational transport next year (save a rump funding for students about to take their GCSEs) and instead adopted the policy recommended by the Lib Dems for the past 6 months and promised to continue funding for all children for the duration of their education at their current school.

The changes mean that no children who are currently attending a faith school with be forced to move as a result of the withdrawal of the funding for denominational transport.

Leader of the Lib Dems on Wiltshire Council, Cllr Jon Hubbard, commented after the meeting, "I'm really pleased that today the council has listened to the comments that I and a large number of the community have been making. You just can't turn this funding off overnight.

"I personally have always been clear that I do not support spending taxpayers money providing additional busses to transport children to schools outside of their local communities, but any changes have to be made in a way that does not impact on the children's education.

"What is a shame is that the cabinet chose to ignore the advice of the council's own scrutiny committee on this issue and will be making schools organise their own transport rather than providing it through their own Public Transport Unit.

"I fail to understand the logic of this decision. The council will now be forcing teachers out of the classroom and onto the phones trying to book busses for children, whist in County Hall we have a specialist public transport procurement team whose workload will fractionally reduce.

"All the time in council meetings we are told how important it is that we have a new central procurement department in the council, yet the Cabinet's decision today advocates doing exactly the opposite and forcing teachers who should be spending time with children to instead be bogged down with yet more paperwork."