Girl of nine is old enough to walk three miles through muddy fields to school says council
A MUDDy trek of almost three miles along country lanes would make a great family adventure.
But nine-year- old Connie Hewitt is expected to make the journey twice a day – for primary school.
Council chiefs told her mother Julie she was old enough to make the 5.4mile return trip on foot.
She said: ‘Cornwall Council wrote to say that the small contribution we claim for fuel allowance to take Connie to school would stop.
‘From now on over-eights are expected to walk up to three miles to school.
‘I appealed saying that we are 3.1 miles to school. Their response was a crosscountry map using country roads and footpaths that is a 2.7-mile alternative.
‘I am all for exercise – however Cornwall Council are expecting her to be accompanied and I work full time.’
Mrs Hewitt, 39, who runs her own farm with husband David, 44, said it was unreasonable to ask a nine-year-old to walk down overgrown lanes with barely any street lighting.
She added: ‘We would have to leave at 7.20am in the pitch black and come back in the dark. She also has asthma. Sometimes she can not walk across the
‘It is a crazy situation’
room when she is affected. So to ask her to do 27 miles a week on a slow and cumbersome trail is ridiculous.’
Mrs Hewitt has now arranged for her MP Steve Double to walk the route with her in the new year.
‘The council picked the route without looking at it and assessing,’ she said. ‘A lot of it is on the road but about a mile is on the footpath. I drive her now but I am a farmer and work full time. I can not take five hours out of my day to walk her to school.
‘There is no public transport in the whole parish so it is a crazy situation. They are taking a lead from London and trying to apply it to a rural area. It doesn’t work.’
The couple’s sons Harry, 14, Daniel, 13, and Joe, 11, get a free bus to their secondary school which is farther away.
The council has turned down Mrs Hewitt’s appeal against the decision.
She posted a video on Facebook showing the difficulty of the route which goes past a dairy farm. Helen Snell of Cornwall Council told Mrs Hewitt in a letter: ‘Whilst the committee appreciate the reasons for your appeal, it did not consider that there were grounds which justified departing from the council’s policy.
‘In particular it was not considered that there were exceptional circumstances which warrant deviating from the council’s Home to School Transport policy and insuffi- cient evidence to demonstrate that Connie is unable to walk to school by reason of her medical condition.’
For the past ten years Mrs Hewitt had been receiving £3.50 a day to drive her children to St Wenn primary near Bodmin, Cornwall.
She plans to refer the case to the ombudsman.