Battle to save spare seat scheme rages on as Oxfordshire parents launch Valentine’s Day ‘lovebomb’ campaign

In the days leading up to the county council’s budget meeting, which is set to take place today (February 14), campaigners from the Save Our Bus Seats campaign sent mass emails to Oxfordshire County Councillors with the aim of coming to some kind of compromise on the future of the scheme.

At the beginning of the year, more than 200 families who are not eligible for the free home-to-school transport service but pay themselves to use the spare seats on the buses already transporting children to schools around the county were informed that they were cutting the service because it was no longer sustainable due to the lower number of children qualifying for the free home-to-school transport.

As a result, parents launched the Save Our Bus Seats campaign, communicated with one another on social media, and organised meetings with council representatives. Last month at a meeting in Banbury, the parents appeared to make progress with their campaign when councillors suggested making a U-turn decision on the withdrawal, however, that did not happen and the parents are still campaigning to save their bus seats.

Parent and one of the organisers of the campaign, Annalisa Miller, has argued that the council’s reason for withdrawing the service does not make sense as the parents are more than happy to cover the extra costs. She said: "We decided to do a positive campaign of children and families writing to councillors, saying at the budget meeting please speak up and make our voices heard. We know that there is no big decision happening today, but we are trying to build up ahead of steam.

"At a recent meeting at one of the affected schools, Wheatley Park, I and two other representatives from Save Our Bus Seats met with two representatives from the council, and they told us that although officers are not political, even if the scheme could be altered to a full cost recovery model, the council would not want to support a school transport scheme that appears to promote parental choice.

"What the council has forgotten in all of this is that we actually pay for the scheme, I pay almost 700 pounds a year to the council to get my child to school. I would quite happily put my child in any school if the teaching was good but in almost every case in the scheme the school’s parents are paying their children to go to are rated good and the schools the council are directing them to are rated inadequate and some of them schools have been rated as failing in everyway by Ofsted so its about parental choice."

"They claim the withdrawal is about budget, but that’s proven nonsense as they cancelled it before doing the tender, so they are not waiting for the figures. The scheme could be made financially viable for them, they just will not run it anymore because they don’t want to."

All of the Conservative MPs in Oxfordshire have publicly spoken against the withdrawal of the scheme, as have all of the Conservative councillors within the county council, who will be opposing the decision in today's budget meeting, which is set to take place this afternoon.

Cllr Ian Snowdon who represents Didcot West said: "We have been absolutley bombarded by emails from parents and children regarding the withdrawal of the scheme and quite rightly so. This is the first batch of 235 children’s seats that they are scrapping, but there are 1200 children who currently use the scheme, so they will all be getting letters each year as the contracts come to an end, so even the parents who are not affected this year are rightly worried.

"These buses provide safety as most of these children live in rural areas; they provide a social atmosphere for them as they are with their friends; they reduce car journeys; and of course, a big benefit is that they teach children to use public transport.

"It is unbelievable that an administration that claims to have the environment at the heart of every decision would make a choice like this.

Mother of two Asha Gill from near Bicester has been very involved in the campaign and spoke to BBC Radio Oxford this morning about how if the scheme were to be removed her child would be forced to walk along 9 miles of muddy canal paths and fields to get to the school as she is busy dropping off her younger child to their primary school.

She said the campaign was about organising all the parents and sharing information among themselves, as many parents have received different explanations and directives regarding the withdrawal of the scheme.

Asha said: "We are hoping that the councillors will see the huge impact their decision will have. They are directing us to schools that don’t even have the capacity to take on more students, and villages affected that don’t have secondary schools on their doorsteps with busses removed, it doesn’t make sense.

"My story is just one of hundreds of parents of children who will have their busses removed in September. They are putting children’s lives at risk by saying they have to walk to school, we live in rural places without safe walk ways.

"There’s no public bus in our village, so my child would have to make her own way, and how could I, as a parent, send my child to school in all weathers and temperatures on her own."

Oxfordshire County Council, when asked for a response, said: "There are around 9,000 children – often with complex needs - who are eligible to use school transport in Oxfordshire. In any given year there will be spare seats on buses once these 9,000+ children have been catered for and the council will continue to be willing to sell those seats to parents. The council is committed to the spare seats scheme.

"During every single year the council takes an annual operational decision about the number of spare seats based on a variety of variables including the numbers of eligible children overall and the tendering of individual services, which happens on average every three to four years. The numbers available in any given part of Oxfordshire can go up as well as down during individual years. Numbers will change as circumstances change each year.

"As regards the 235 parents/children affected by recent decisions we continue to be in constructive dialogue and engagement with them about mitigations."