'Safe path' to school 'is just laughable'

PARENTS ANGERED AT HIKE AFTER FREE BUSES AXED

- By CHRIS CAULFIELD Local democracy reporter

PARENTS are fighting back after Surrey County Council cancelled school buses, meaning children may have to hike across miles of unlit heathland.

In December, the council said it would axe free school buses from Molesey to Esher High School.

The children were instead advised to “bring torches” and “suitable footwear” to cross the dark alleyways, open fields and unguarded viaduct sluice gates, after the money-saving move. This emerged one month after the council announced it was given more than £12 million from the Government to “boost bus services in Surrey.

Now, desperate parents have started a petition calling for some of that money to be put towards increasing the 814 bus between the two towns as the service is already often overcrowded - and that is before the extra children who used to be provided with free buses are added.