A 16-year-old teen now faces a three-hour round trip to reach his A-Level lessons after the council withdrew his access to the school transport service, according to his disgruntled mum.
Debbie Edwards’ son, who attends The Maelor School in the village of Penley in Wrexham, Wales, had been using the bus service run by Wrexham County Borough Council for several years during secondary school.
As the teen is now 16-years-old, he was required to pay a fee of £100 per term in order to access the service.
However, Ms Edwards said she received an email last month from the local authority to say it was stopping concessionary seats and sixth formers were not permitted to travel on it.
She said her son now has to walk eight miles to school, a journey which would take about three hours both ways.
According to Wales Online, she said: “My husband works in Manchester and I work in Malpas (Cheshire).
“Driving him is not practical. It has turned my four-mile commute into a 20-mile each way drive.
“I am losing money as I am starting work late and finishing early to pick him up.
“I even looked at dropping him off in Bangor-on-Dee to get the bus from there, but the bus to Penley does not get him in on time during term-time – only at weekends and school holidays.”
The matter was raised at a recent meeting of the council’s lifelong learning scrutiny committee.
Gareth Jones, interim head of service strategy at the local authority, said the council had sought legal advice and the decision to withdraw some concessionary seats was “legally sound”.
He said a total of 39 paid-for seats were being withdrawn, adding that the council had “exhausted our options in terms of offering mitigation to try to avoid the withdrawal of these 39 seats”.
The teen previously made use of the bus service to travel to the council-run school
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Under the council’s school transport policy on its website, it states that free transport is not provided to post-16s.
Instead, an allocated seat can be paid for on transport that has “spare capacity”.
The notice on the council website reads: “The seat may be withdrawn at any time, giving reasonable notice – when seats become unavailable due to qualifying pupil demand for free transport, or where there’s a reduction in vehicle capacity.
“If this happens and you’ve already paid the full cost for the year, we’ll refund any remaining balance back to you.”
GB News has contacted Wrexham County Borough Council for comment.