A MOTHER has criticised Torfaen council for a series of school transport mix-ups which have left her son stranded at home for more than three weeks since the start of the current school year.
Since late September, Laura Vaughan's seven-year-old son, Ashton, has been taking a taxi for the 12-mile round trip to school.
But now the local authority wants to replace Ashton’s taxi service with a bus – which will only stop a 20-minute walking distance from his home, up and down a steep hill each day.
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Ms Vaughan said she hadn’t been told Ashton’s taxi service was being replaced. She only found out when a taxi failed to turn up for him on Tuesday (January 8).
Initially, Ms Vaughan said the bus company told her it had not agreed with the council that it would pick up Ashton, but she said an agreement with the firm and the authority had now been reached.
“Nobody seems to know what’s going on,” Ms Vaughan said. “There’s a complete lack of communication.
“[Ashton] is seven years old. It’s not fair.”
Ashton can't get to school by any other means because Ms Vaughan is scheduled to have an operation which will render her unable to drive for a short time.
This is the second school transport problem the family has faced this school year.
After moving to the area, Ms Vaughan was told there was no room in the local school and Ashton could only be given a place in a school six miles away.
But when the new school year started in September, the school transport Ashton had been promised didn’t materialise. Ms Vaughan said she was told a council worker hadn’t sent in the necessary application.
It took three weeks of calls for Ms Vaughan to sort out the problem, and until this week, Ashton had been using a taxi to get to school.
But now he once again finds himself in the middle of a school transport mix-up.
“They’re supposed to be looking out for children, but nobody cares,” Ms Vaughan said.
“It’s so important for him to have an education. He’s been through a lot with the move to a new place.”
Ms Vaughan said she believed the council would be “quick enough” to act if she wasn’t fulfilling her responsibilities to send Ashton to school.
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In a statement, a Torfaen council spokesman said: “All parents were informed that the taxi service from September was a temporary solution while the bus service was being put in place for January 2019.
"Parents were again informed before Christmas that the bus service would commence at the start of the new term and an agreement put in place with the bus operator.
"The nearest bus stop on the route to school is within the permitted distance of the operator’s contract.”
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