Pupils get ticket to ride (From Gazette & Herald)

Pupils get ticket to ride

A THREE-year battle to get home-to-school transport for village pupils attending a Ryedale secondary school - led by parents and councillors and supported by the Gazette & Herald - has ended in success.

Parents and the parish council at Wombleton, near Helmsley, are celebrating after an appeal committee set up by North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) agreed to back their calls for help to allay road accident fears. Previous pleas to the county education authority and its transport department met with no success and the issue ended up in the hands of the Local Government Ombudsman.

Parents of 22 children, backed by the parish councillors, have repeatedly protested that they were worried about the safety of the children walking either along the A170 road from Wombleton to Ryedale School at Beadlam, or on desolate country lanes with no footpaths and steep verges.

They got support, too, from senior police officers in Ryedale. But NYCC ruled that because the children lived inside the laid-down minimum distance from a secondary school, they were not entitled to school transport.

With a number of children having both parents at work from early in the morning they have had no alternative but to walk to school.

After seeing the route for themselves at 8am with the students, the appeal committee - county Couns Herbert Tindall, David Ireton and John Stockdale - went to hear the opposing arguments from the county education authority and the parish council at the Millennium Church Rooms at Beadlam parish church.

At the end of the hearing, they agreed to award transport - which will be a free bus service - for Wombleton children to travel to and from Ryedale School for two of the three terms each year, from September to Easter. In addition, the committee ruled that the footpath between the school and the village should be widened and improved, and that trees and other vegetation should be cut down to improve visibility.

Coun Pat Lane, chairman of the parish council who has spearheaded the campaign on behalf of parents, said: "We are thrilled with the outcome. It has been a long hard fight, and we are very grateful to the media, especially the Gazette & Herald, Insp Neil Burnett and Sgt Cliff Edens, parents and residents of Wombleton."

He particularly paid tribute to parish clerk Pam Armstrong.

"She has undertaken a tremendous amount of administration, organising meetings, and playing a major part in the campaign. She has been an absolute brick and everyone owes her a great debt of gratitude."

The police had said they were particularly concerned that the young people were vulnerable, especially in the winter months and dark mornings and evenings, as they walked to and from school.

"We emphasised the fact that farm vehicles are using the lanes throughout the year and that we have three large caravan sites near the village," said Coun Lane.

Transport officers from NYCC put the case that they believed the routes were safe for the children to walk.

The argument had focused on 16-year-old Lauren Sharples whose mum, Sue, has been one of the chief campaigners. Once the appeal committee recognised her plight in having to walk along the busy A170 Scarborough to Thirsk road where there is no footpath, or on the lonely country lanes at the back of the village to the school, the ruling applied to not only all the existing students from the Wombleton area going to Ryedale, but those in the future, said Coun Lane.

The battle had gone to the Local Government Ombudsman after the parish council objected to the way it had been handled by the county authority.

Mrs Sharples said: "We are delighted that common sense has prevailed at last. Ideally, we would have liked the children to have had the benefit of school transport throughout the year, because every season brings its own hazards. But everyone is very happy because it has been a victory for our village and good sense."

While Lauren will shortly be leaving Ryedale School after completing her GCSE examinations, her brother, Timothy, 11, will be starting in September.

Coun Tindall said: "We were very grateful to the village people of Wombleton who took part in the appeal. It is good to know that there are people in the villages who are prepared to give up their time and work so hard for their communities."

He added: "We did walk the routes and we found the A170 road is very busy and there are danger points."

Coun Tindall said that while the education authority had policies, there were times when other considerations had to be taken on board.

Improvements need to be made to road signing to slow traffic down.

"We found that in walking the routes, parts of the roads are narrow and dangerous. Anyone crossing the road has to be very alert because of the speed of traffic."

He said that a tree was partially blocking visibility at one point in the road and the committee have asked for it be pruned.

"We opted for the terms when there are dark nights because it can be difficult to ascertain the speed of traffic when they are showing headlights."

Updated: 12:22 Wednesday, June 16, 2004