Free School Transport: Beccles Briefing

The first two Suffolk County Council school transport consultation meetings have been about Leiston and Saxmundham. Tonight the story moves to Beccles and some of the issues are quite different.

Ahead of the meting at Sir John Leman High School tonight from 7pm to 9pm here is a quick summary of the issues and link to more information.

Firstly the all important map!
The full consultation document can be downloaded from Suffiolk CCs website. However the extract below shows the main issues.

Using these principles, it is proposed that the transport priority areas for these two schools will be the same because the two Beccles sites are less than two miles apart, and that the existing Sir John Leman High School catchment area will be used for this purpose. This means that students living within this area would be entitled to free transport to either of the two schools.

The promoters of the free school are considering making their own arrangements for transport, independent of the county council, because the daily finish times of the new school may be different from that of Sir John Leman High School.

The map on page 6 illustrates the Sir John Leman catchment area, together with the area (shaded) where Sir John Leman High School or the free school at Beccles would be the nearest. Areas around and including Reydon, Southwold and Wrentham are nearer to schools in Lowestoft, not schools in Beccles. However, it is proposed to continue to include these areas in the Beccles Transport priority area because the nearest school in Lowestoft, Pakefield, does not have any surplus capacity. 

So in Beccles the shared transport priority area for the two schools (which is what Saxmundham and Leiston want) is the proposal on the table.

I will be live tweeting again from the meeting tonight.