11:34 PM
Andy Miles
This autumn my daughter started at a new school that is actually
closer to my home than the catchment school for our village. Since most of the children
from her middle school were also to move to that school I decided to apply for
a free bus pass.
On 05/08/11 I received a letter from Passenger Transport
informing me I was not entitled to a free bus pass for my daughter’s journey to
school. Strangely, the reason given for
this was that the route is registered as a local bus service. I was sure the school
bus was only for school children, and that the public were not allowed on it.
Indeed I confirmed with the operator that the bus is not available for public
use, nor are there any public buses stopping at the school during the hours of
9am or 4pm. About this time I also discovered that people living in the village,
just 500m from my house had actually received free bus passes for exactly the
same journey that my daughter needed to make.
I therefore decided to contact the council for an
explanation, and this is where my pain really started. I’ve listed the sequence
of events at the end of this blog entry, but in summary for three months it was
impossible to speak to anyone in the back office to either:
a) Explain
why I was denied free bus transport based on Route TN162 being registered as a
local bus service.
b) To
confirm free bus transport would be provided to me as it has for others in the
village.
The front call desk became a barrier and I was unable to
speak directly with the person making the decision, so was unable to get an
answer, a form of what is known as the “authority limits tactic”. No one in the
back office rang me as the front desk told me they would. In fact I ended up
having my entire week’s holiday wasted by waiting in for them to call after
they said they would.
I firmly believe I would never have heard anything back
had it not been for two tier schools review. At one of the school consultations I was able to speak to a senior member of the council,
and what a difference that made, indeed the person in charge of school buses
rang me on the day I was told they would.
Apparently the school bus does count as public transport as
available spaces are sold to pupils who aren’t entitled to free transport, they
deem this “discretionary transport”, for which they charge £180 a term, much more
than the local bus service. Unfortunately you can’t use the cheaper local bus
service, as whether purposely or not, it doesn’t run at the times of the school
bus.
The council did apologise, both for the huge delay in
responding, but also because they gave me the wrong reply. I should have been
told I didn’t qualify for a free bus pass due to yet another upper school being
closer than either the catchment or the actual school my daughter attends. Essentially
I was playing the post code lottery and was just a few metres over the
boundary. The majority of children from my village don’t move to the catchment upper
school, but instead go to my daughter’s school, so in this instance the children
that pay for transport clearly subsidise the cost of transport of the children
that the council is bound to support.
Interestingly,
when I pushed them for the map of the route they were using to determine the
distance to school, they said it was a significant amount of effort to pull
that together as it exists on very old maps rather than on a computer. This seems
bizarre in this day and age with mapping software, and makes you wonder how
accurate the boundary is. Still, given what they have put me through I’m
certainly going to request this.
Most worryingly is that my above first-hand experience of
the contempt that Suffolk County Council hold for their constituents by not
bothering to reply as they said they would, now makes me deeply concerned about
their ability to successful deliver the change to two tier schools as part of
the Thurston Partnership.
Ironically, unless the council change the catchment area for
the new two tier Thurston school, I would end up paying for my daughter to
attend the Thurston campus, but get free transport to the Beyton campus. I would therefore urge anyone eligible to attend Thurston Community College, but out of its catchment area, to write to the council and ask them to change the catchment area to include their village. The council have confirmed to me they will consider this, otherwise we will have a two
tier school with two tier transport.
Here is the sequence of events:
16/08/11: I
telephoned the free home to school transport department who informed me we
would be contacted back within 2 working days.
19/08/11 (3 days):
I was not contacted; so I phoned back and was then told it could be up to a
week before I got a reply.
30/08/11 (11 days):
I was yet again not contacted; I was told the turnaround time for a call back
was now 10 working days, which had passed. The person I spoke to tried to put
me through to the back office, but they did not answer. I called again later
that day, but a different person refused to try and put me through. They did
however make my case an ‘urgent’.
31/08/11 (12
days): Since the case was now classified as urgent I telephoned the following
day, but yet again no progress had been made with my case.
02/09/11 (14
days): A producer from BBC Radio Suffolk contacted
me after reading on Twitter about my frustration at not getting a reply of any
sort. I was interviewed about the situation on the radio, just 5 days before my
daughter was due to start her new school. Nobody from the Council was prepared
to appear on the show, and a statement was given which just a repeat of what is
on the council website, rather than providing an answer to my appeal.
12/09/11 (24 days):
After the Council had still failed to contact me, I had to pay £180 for one
term’s bus travel whilst others nearby were receiving it free. My wife
telephoned on 12/09/11 to check on progress. This time the person she spoke to changed the reason for refusal. It was now due to Stowmarket
High being my daughter’s closest school rather than Thurston Community College,
and therefore free transport would not be provided. Clearly my appeal against
the original denial for free transport was still not answered. My wife
therefore insisted I get to speak with someone in the department so that I can understand
these points.
20/09/11 (32
days): Yet again nobody had
contacted us. My wife therefore emailed customer services at Suffolk County
Council to complain about the complete lack of response we have had from this
department and to request a name of someone in charge to write to.
22/09/11 (34
days): An email was received back saying this information had been added to
my file, but no contact name was provided. Rather pointless.
03/10/2011 (46
days): After further contact by email my wife was finally provided with a
name and told someone would contact her.
14/11/2011 (88
days): It had now been 12 weeks since my first contact with Suffolk CC, and
still no one had contacted me. I wrote a letter to the person whose name my wife was provided with and sent it via registered post.
15/11/2011 (89
days): My wife and I spoke to Linda Howe at the Thurston school consultation and told
her of our experience. She said she would make sure we were contacted on 17/11.
We were contacted and I’m very grateful to Linda for doing this as we finally got to speak
to someone, even if we didn't get the outcome we wanted.
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