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APPLEYARD: Hello, my name's Mike Appleyard, and I'm the Cabinet Member for Education at
Buckinghamshire County Council, my budget is 45 million pounds a year, and it's split
in two, about 25 million pounds of that is there to improve the performance and the achievement
of the children in the county, and the other 19 or 20 million pounds is for Home to School
Transport. I have made a conscious decision to prioritise my budget in the area of student
achievement, we need to make savings on the Home to School Budget around five million
pounds. One million pounds of that is already secured because as most of you will know,
the changes that were installed two years ago, were phased in, and the back end of the
phase in happened over the next two years or so, which will bring us that sort of money.
APPLEYARD: The fayres that are paid for, are being heavily subsided by the council and
this is something that we can no longer afford to do, what we are trying to do though, to
make savings to the budget, which means that the whole impact of the savings we need to
make, will not be falling on parents. We are asking Amey, which is the company that manages
our Home to School Transport, we're giving them targets to meet, which will result in
quite heavy savings, last time we did the consultation, we asked parents if they were
prepared to ask their children if they could walk a little further, to pick up public transport,
and we feel that a part of the education of children is also to teach them independence
and use of the public transport systems.
APPLEYARD: And what it does for you, as parents, it means we can reduce the price for you,
by taking that up, we are clearly not going to do that in an insensitive way, and parents
would be involved in discussions with us, where we're going to change that particular
system. Currently we pay for the fares for children who are over sixteen, the further
education colleges and sixth forms are already funded by the government to pay for that,
so we'll be asking them to pay for grants for people who want to apply for those grants,
they will need to apply to their educator. We're proposing that the fare increases from
2 to 3 pounds, per day, we know that this is a significant increase.
APPLEYARD: We have to say that the cost of hiring the buses, expensive simply because
the larger of those buses and coaches that are used to transport your children, that
is the only use that is made of those buses, those are the proposals that we're asking
you about in the consultation document, we are being forced to come into line with a
lot of other authorities, with regard to the charges and the level of charges that we're
making, for Home to School Transport. You'll find a list of local authorities that are
quite close by, on our website, under frequently asked questions, our website is www.buckscc.gov.uk/haveyoursay.
APPLEYARD: I would like to give you a bit of good news, and that is that we have got
to the point that we are able to allow payment by Direct Debit, you'll find that in the consultation,
we are going out into the public, for eleven public meetings over the next three or four
weeks, I shall be very pleased to meet you all, and speak to you about what I've just
been talking about, until then, goodbye.