Monmouthshire County Council has agreed to amend the current policy for Post 16 Transport for students with Special Education Needs following a motion by Councillor Dimitri Batrouni at last week's county council meeting.

The motion was inspired by the struggles that many parents had at the start of term, as many students with Additional Learning Needs were denied transport to colleges as far as Newport and Hereford.

The struggles of these parents and students were eventually recognised by MCC, and most parents were eventually found suitable transport following appeals.

However, Councillor Batrouni expressed concern that the situation was very confusing for the parents and urged that changes be made to the policy to stop this from happening again.

As part of his amendment to the current policy, Councillor Batrouni said in his motion, "The authority will define disability as written in the Equality Act which provides that a person has a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment and if the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on the person's ability to carry out normal day-to day activity."

His motion also included two new sections which state that "the authority will communicate the decision to parents, carers or guardians regarding the exact reason for the successful or unsuccessful application.

"This will be done in a timely manner, no longer than seven working days from the decision, to enable parents time to appeal and/or make other arrangements before term starts where possible and practicable."

He also said that once a child has been successful in their application, an annual application for transport for the continuation of the course will need to be made where the applicants process towards independence will be reviewed.

This policy was well received by the council, and the Cabinet Member with responsibility for Education, Liz Hacket Pain, said that while many of these additions should have been already happening in line to the law, she welcomed the inclusions into the policy.

And while the discussions got relatively heated regarding the struggles of many of the parents and the feelings from some of the opposition members that the council had "dropped the ball" and "let parents and children down", the council accepted that work would be done to work closely with parents to ensure a smoother running of the system next year.

An amendment was also made to the motion by Councillor Simon Howarth to include the setting up of a cross party working group to work with parents to ensure that their needs are met and policy is being implemented correctly, which was approved with a majority vote.

The overall motion was accepted, and Councillor Dimitri Batrouni said he was delighted at the result of the vote and looked forward to seeing the new policy with the amendments in action.