A mum-of-two says she has to do an unnecessary school run twice a day because her daughter is not allowed to travel in the same taxi as her son.
The Leicestershire parent hit at out at her local council for a decision that she says now stops her from purchasing a seat in the taxi that her son is able to travel in for free.
Arleta Reiff-Marganiec, from Great Glen, in Leicester, has criticised Leicestershire County Council for ending the seat purchase scheme that saved her from taking her daughter into school herself.
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Her son, Ciaran, 14, has had free school transport in the form of a taxi since he started at Manor High School in Oadby, but her 12-year-old daughter Isla did not qualify for the transport when she went up to secondary, she told Leicestershire Live.
That means Isla cannot ride alongside her brother - despite the taxi already making the journey from their home to the school.
A pupil under the age of eight is eligible for free school transport if they live more than three miles from their school - but if a parent chooses to send their child to a school that is not the closest school with available spaces to them, they lose their right to transport.
Ms Reiff-Marganiec originally applied to send Ciaran to the nearest secondary school to them, but he did not get a place there. Because of this, he was eligible for the transport when he was offered a school place that was more than three miles away.
In Isla’s case, however, she opted to send her to the same school as her brother. As the choice was the family's, this meant she would not get free rides.
Last year, she was able to purchase Isla a seat in the same taxi as her son for £800.
But when she went to do the same for this academic year, she says she found that the scheme had been cancelled.
“It’s a ridiculous situation," Ms Reiff-Marganiec said. "Basically, the taxi comes, picks up my son and I take my daughter, put her in the car and we follow the taxi. And then the reverse in the afternoon.
“But, at the moment, I don’t want to give up his seat in the taxi just in case they decide to cancel it. Frankly we hoped that the fare-paying scheme would be reinstated and seats can only be bought on an existing service. So it’s two car journeys for exactly the same route.
"I am a working mother, so longer term I cannot do the school run every day. But, as a mother, I cannot justify having one child be picked up from the front door, and waking the other up an hour earlier to ask them to walk the 6km to school."
Ms Reiff-Marganiec said the removal of the scheme was ‘incomprehensible’ to her given how desperate the council currently is to find sources of funding.
A freedom of information request revealed that 393 seats had been brought over the past five years. At £800 a seat, this totals an income of £314,400.
Ms Reiff-Marganiec said: “As a tax-payer I am incensed that the council is willing to forego this income, while considering cutting services further and of course increasing bills for all.
“It is all very well blaming the pandemic for the financial position the council finds itself in, but finding that the council is willing to forego this stream of income shows that that is a rather convenient and superficial explanation.
“We subsidised the council service [by buying a seat for Isla last year], while lowering the carbon footprint by not adding another car journey, and lowering traffic around the school.”
Councillor Ozzy O’Shea, cabinet member for highways and transport, said: “We’re talking to the family. The fare-paying scheme was discretionary and, as the Marganiecs acknowledge, fewer children use the service year after year.
“We appreciate it’s a different situation with taxis so we’ll be looking at ways of adapting the fare-paying scheme.”
Coun O’Shea added: “The scheme did serve a useful purpose in generating income with the majority of farepayers on buses intended for mainstream pupils, but recent Government regulations have insisted the vehicles need to be fully accessible, for example to wheelchair users.
"Like other councils, we believe the cost of adapting the buses so they fit the regulations would outweigh the income we receive from a relatively small number of farepayers, which was 15 last year."
Ms Reiff-Marganiec acknowledged only 15 seats were brought last year, but added this doesn't reflect a lack of interest, due to the pandemic.
She said: “Last year only 15 additional places were sold but this was at the height of a pandemic, this was when we didn’t know whether schools would be closed, or whether it would be advisable to share transport at the time.
“But all the previous years, there was quite a bit of demand and there is still demand. I know enough people wanting to purchase a seat from here, from Great Glen to my children’s high school that we could fill a taxi.”
