Today we met with Councillor Peter King, Cabinet Member for Building Services, Highways and Transportation, the Safeguarding Officer and the Passenger Transport Manager of the Council to review our school transport report that we carried out in 2015. It has been just over a year since we made our recommendations and we reviewed our action plan with the officers responsible and were updated on all aspects.
We found out that since a new operator has been providing school transport, the transport teams who have been carrying out spot checks and introduced head counts on school buses, have noted improvements in cleanliness and punctuality.
Also, as we took part in the consultation on the new School Transport Policy we were informed that this will be implemented in September 2017. The main changes to the policy are; if you are in post 16 education you will only be supplied transport to your education provision in the Vale, Bridgend and Cardiff and if you are awarded free school transport in error you will only be covered until the end of term.
As a youth cabinet we have also been involved in the ongoing development of the Welsh Government Travel Behaviour Code which we shared with everyone. It is now updated and we have put forward our views that it should be distributed across the Vale and students should be actively made aware of it.
Finally we also brought up the issue about school transport to Llantwit High school from the Eglwys Brewis estate in St Athan which was recently raised at a Vale Youth Forum meeting. It was discussed that the route is available under the Welsh Government guidelines and a variety of options have been suggested to concerned parents.
