Action over Mid Wales bus row governors
Four school governors have been suspended amid controversy over subsidised transport for out-of-catchment pupils.
Action has been taken by Powys County Council against its local authority governors attached to Llanfyllin High School.
The council has also prevented Councillor Myfanwy Alexander, former cabinet member in charge of schools, from holding a governor role at any school in Powys.
Council officers also face a probe after an independent investigation showed they and the governors knew the school was going against council policy.
The authority said that the school should not have offered subsidised buses to 149 pupils for whom Llanfyllin is not their nearest secondary school. Many of these were being brought in on coaches from homes across the Shropshire border.
The council decided to allow the arrangement at Llanfyllin to continue for the next two years earlier this week to give parents and pupils time to come to terms with the changes. But they will have to pay the same transport costs as other out-of-catchment children pay in Powys – £120 a term rather than the £80 a term they currently pay. That will jump to more than £200 a term in two years.
Councillor Wynne Jones, the authority's deputy leader and cabinet member for finance, said: "We have thought long and hard about this but on balance we felt that allowing a two-year period was in the best interest of innocent parents and pupils who have been left in a difficult position through no fault of their own."
The four LEA governors – Councillors Peter Lewis, Aled Davies, Darren Mayor and Gwynfor Thomas – were expected to make a joint statement to Llanfyllin Town Council last night.
Yesterday North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson told some of the Shropshire parents whose children travel to Llanfyllin he would do what he could to help, including writing to the Welsh Assembly.
