1. Please provide a breakdown of ALL reasons leading to your department’s decision to remove Down St Mary pick-up from the bus route. I draw your attention to the fact that you have not provided these details as previously requested in my email 21.07.2022. To simply say it was an ‘efficiency review’ is not acceptable. As a department within a publicly accountable local authority one would expect you to have an audit trail or some other evidence justifying your policy decisions, and I suspect the Appeal Panel would take the same view here.
An efficiency review of the Queen Elizabeth’s school network was undertaken, due to the large amount of vehicles travelling to the school, and to look at whether we could make any savings on routes that had low capacity. Previously we have received complaints from residents in Crediton about the volume of buses travelling to the school, and it was felt that if we could combine routes this would minimise traffic and make a financial saving. The changes can be summarised as follows:
1. Terminating CRED009 @ £236.12p per day with Linden Holdings for a 53 seater vehicle
2. Terminating CRED051 @ £194.73p per day with Linden Holdings for a 53 seater vehicle
3. Terminating CRED039 @ £158.80p per day with Holsworthy Ltd for a 16 seater vehicle
4. Terminating CRED040 @ £153.98p per day with Holsworthy Ltd for a 16 seater vehicle
5. Creating CRED010 as a direct Copplestone run to QE @ £295.00 per day with Lindens Holdings
6. Creating CRED013 as a feeder route for Down St Mary and Zeal Monachorum to meet CRED012 before going onto to doing Bow Primary School run (24 Seater vehicle)
7. Creating CRED015 as a replacement for CRED053 with adding pickup points from CRED053 and CRED009 (53 Seater vehicle)
8. Creating CRED021 as a Copplestone Primary School run with 16/24 seater
2. Please can you outline the consultation and decision making process you followed to reach your decision to remove Down St Mary pick-up point from all proposed bus routes, including details of all other stakeholders involved in the decision making process.
No consultation is required for alteration to routes as a result of efficiency savings or organic changes to school transport required to enable a network to become more efficient..
3. I draw your attention to the fact that there are some discrepancies in the CRED015 route schedule you have provided in your previous email 27.07.2022 below. Both the order of pick-up and timings appear to be incorrect. Your schedule shows the morning outward journey to QE school lasting 55 minutes, whilst the afternoon return journey lasts 46 minutes. If the return journey is indeed 9 minutes shorter than the outward journey, please can you explain the reasons for this. Please can you check this once again, and confirm the correct order of pick-up and timings.
The confirmed route schedule for CRED015 is available on the available link.
4. Please can you confirm if all CRED015 pick-up points fall within the Queen Elizabeth’s School Catchment area.
Lapford does not fall within the Queen Elizabeth’s school catchment, however there is entitlement for students at this pick up point on grounds other than designated or nearest school. All other pick up points are either within the designated school area, or Queen Elizabeth’s is the nearest school.
5. Please can you confirm exact numbers of children being picked up at each pick-up point on the proposed CRED015 route.
Please refer to the link shown in response to Question 3.
The number of students at each pick up point is shown on the under Number Out.
6. Please can you provide details of all other proposed bus routes within the QE School catchment area, or alternatively provide details of where this information can be found.
Please refer to the link shown in response to Question 3.
A list of all routes to Queen Elizabeth’s School from September is shown.
7. Please confirm if there are any other proposed bus routes that will be travelling along Morchard Road, besides CRED015.
We do not have any other contracted routes that are due to go along Morchard Road.
8. Please can you confirm the exact location of the bus stop pick-up point at Morchard Road for the morning outward journey to QE school.
Students will wait for the bus at the front of the Devonshire Dumpling Pub on Morchard Road.
9. Please can you explain how during your ‘review process’ you determined that the Union Hill Road route between Down St Mary and Morchard Road was deemed safe for pedestrian school children. I draw your attention to the fact that your route safety visit (conducted by Sarah Bishop and Matthew Joll) was conducted on Tuesday 12th July, after you had made your decision to remove Down St Mary pick-up point which you communicated to us and other parents by email on Monday 27th June.
Devon County Council’s Education Transport Policy indicates that parents are responsible to get child/ren to a pick up point. No assessment of route safety is made unless an appeal on route safety or individual circumstances are made to officers. This would normally be considered by the Authority’s agreed appeal protocol.
10. Please provide details/dates of any other route safety visits to Down St Mary that your department has conducted prior to the route safety visit conducted on Tuesday 12th July 2022.
No previous route reports are on file.
11. In your route safety visit report 12.07.2022, the paragraph headed ‘Legislation’ refers to ‘walk with reasonable safety’. Please can you clarify the criteria you have used to determine ‘walk with reasonable safety’. Do you take into account ‘near misses’ or ‘non-collisions’ as part of your decision making, and if not, why?
Near misses or non-collisions are not recorded and are not taken into account.
There is some case law relating to an available walking route:
In Rogers v Essex CC [1987] “In my judgement a route to be available within the meaning of s 39(5) must be a route along which a child accompanied as necessary can walk and walk with reasonable safety to school. It does not fail to qualify as available because of dangers that would arise if the child is unaccompanied.”
Department for Education (DfE) statutory guidance indicates that Local Authorities should consider a range of risks such as canals, rivers, ditches, speed of traffic and fields of vision.
Officers would also consider the nature of the route used such as width of road and traffic count and collision data.
Road Safety GB have issued a booklet called “Assessment of Walked Routes to Schools” which is broadly in line with the DfE guidance in terms of the range of factors used to determine whether a route is “unavailable”.
12. Please can you provide details of a previous appeal made in 2020 against proposed removal of the Down St Mary pick-up point, and the reasons for upholding the appeal at that time.
No information is held on this matter.