School Transport Update

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.

Back to work!

This afternoon, the Youth Cabinet held it's first meeting of the term.  The first item on the agenda involved evaluating the twinning youth camp we attended in Mouscron, Belgium at the beginning of August.  We have made a presentation about our trip which we will be presenting to the Vale of Glamorgan Twinning Association to tell them about our experience and to thank them for all their support.

Also on the agenda was the National Assembly for Wales' enquiry into Youth Work which is currently being run by the Children, Young People and Education committee.  We gave our views on youth services in Wales and you too can take part in the survey here.  We also had our say on what we thought of the new Welsh Government Travel Behaviour Code which has been an ongoing piece of work for us since 2014.

It's not long until the next Youth Mayor election which will take place during Local Democracy Week (week commencing 10th October).  This is a busy time for the Youth Cabinet and some of our members are already preparing their manifestos hoping to get your vote to be the next Youth Mayor for 2016-17.