An MS has strongly criticised school transport arrangements in Monmouthshire.

MS Laura Anne Jones said that children’s and young people’s wellbeing and getting them safely to school “should be an absolute priority for all levels of government. Labour’s decision to cut costs at children’s expense, and to their detriment, is appalling and the wrong one to make.”

Her comments follow many complaints made by both parents and pupils on the first day back to school. A failure to provide safe home-to-school transport for all children in Monmouthshire - instead putting them on public buses if they are deemed close to a stop and are not in Year 7 or 8 or have extenuating circumstances, resulted in one public bus having 51 pupils on board. Many pupils were already standing from Usk on the jouney to Monmouth, as pictured by a pupil, before many more students got on in Raglan and at other stops en route to Monmouth.

“I pressed MCC to act urgently and now a bigger bus has been promised for Route 60, for which I am grateful, but whether that will be adequate remains to be seen,” she added.

She went on to criticise MCC’s and the Welsh Government school transport policy: “The Labour MCC policy, supported by a Plaid Cymru Welsh Government, has taken away home-to-school transport from even more children this year and put them on unsuitable public transport. It also charges extortionate prices for the services the council does provide, punishing those who live in rural areas and making sixth-formers pay for the bus themselves every day. These are the wrong policy decisions.

“It’s not good for pupils’ wellbeing to stand around in the cold and wet, endure lengthy waits for a public bus.

“Children should not suffer because governments at both levels are making bad decisions and have the wrong priorities.”