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A few years ago the two Cheshire councils withdrew subsides for faith school transport, which resulted in services having to run commercially.

15 years ago the bus routes serving St Nicholas High School (Hartford, Cheshire) were:
Winsford area 1 (Cheshire County Council Yellow Bus)
Winsford area 2 (Cheshire County Council Yellow Bus)
Winsford area 3 (Cheshire County Council Yellow Bus)
Winsford area 4 (Byley Coaches)
Sale area (Walkers Coaches) ** Shared with Sir John Deanes College**
Middlewich area 1 (Walkers Coaches)
Middlewich area 2 (Ravel Travel)
Knutsford area 1 (Walkers Coaches)
Knutsford area 2 (Niddries Coaches)
Frodsham via Weaverham (Walkers Coaches)
Wincham and Lostock Gralam area (Ravel Travel)
Tarvin and Tarporley area (Walkers Coaches)
Lach Dennis via Rudheath (Warrington Borough Transport)
Barnton area (Dobsons) ** Shared with Hartford High School**
Cuddington area (Selwyns)
Davenham, Moulton and Kingsmead (Dobsons)
Holmes Chapel and Sandbach area (Coppenhalls Coaches)
Plus minibus services to other areas, including one for the Crewe area primarily for Sixth Formers with the Catholic High School in Crewe not having a Sixth Form.


For the last academic year the bus routes were:
Winsford via Wharton (Walkers Coaches)
Winsford via Whitegate (Walkers Coaches)
Appleton, Stretton, Pickmere, Wincham (Walkers Coaches)
Helsby, Frodsham, Kingsley, Crowton, Acton Bridge (GHA Coaches)
Chelford, Knutsford, Kingsmead (GHA Coaches)
Bostock, Moulton, Davenham (GHA Coaches)
Holmes Chapel, Sandbach, Middlewich, Rudheath (Barratts)
Middlewich (Barratts)
Barnton, Weaverham, Norley, Cuddington, Sandiway (Barratts)
Tarporley, Tarvin, Manley, Willington, Little Budworth (School Minibus)


For the coming academic year the bus routes will be:
SN25 Winsford via Wharton (Walkers Coaches)
SN15 Winsford via Whitegate (Walkers Coaches)
494 Appleton, Stretton, Pickmere, Wincham (Walkers Coaches)
XXX Helsby, Frodsham, Kingsley, Crowton, Acton Bridge (GHA Coaches)
SN35 Knutsford, Moulton, Davenham, Kingsmead (Walkers Coaches)
BA321 Holmes Chapel, Sandbach, Middlewich, Rudheath (Barratts)
BA322 Middlewich (Barratts)


With the school still continuing to be oversubscribed it seems more and more school children are using alternatives to school buses, such as regular buses, trains and cars.

(05/08/2015 13:40)Dentonian Wrote: [ -> ]Irrelevant of the type of school, if there are realistic alternative buses (or even trains), then the tax-payer should not be paying subsidised School buses.

As an aside, whose budget does it come out of in Cheshire/East? Education or Transport?

For church schools an agreement was drawn up that the local Diocese would fund the building of the school and maintenance (normally funded by the local authority) if the local authority provided free* transport to get children to and from the schools. A number of local authorities (including the two main ones in Cheshire) decided to end that agreement a few years back, which means they now have to pay for the maintenance of the school buildings, given church school buildings were normally well maintained that was probably a decision which will be cheaper for the council in the short term but might be more costly in the long term.

* Assuming children went to their nearest church school and lived over 2-3 miles away from the school (depending if it was a primary or secondary.) If a non-Catholic pupil went to a Catholic school then they would have to pay unless the Catholic school was their nearest school as well as being over 2-3 miles away.

For the specific school I gave as an example, it is around 0.25 miles from Greenbank station and 1.25 miles from Hartford station, so a lot of school pupils have transferred to train services which means the Chester-Manchester via Altrincham and Liverpool-Birmingham services can get very packed! One of the reasons for actually introducing some of the school bus services (I mentioned in the list of services which ran 15 years ago) rather than giving pupils passes to use on the trains was that there were too many pupils travelling on the trains compared to the capacity of the trains.

However, not all have transferred to alternative public transport and many get driven in which has caused congestion to get much worse on local roads.