Worcestershire has some of the highest bus fares in the country but First Bus increased the fares yet again on Sunday 29th April. Single and return fares have risen by up to 50p and all day and season tickets now cost more except electronically downloaded tickets on mobile phones.
 
A single ticket for the shortest journeys has increased by 22% and a day ticket by 12.5% - well above any pay rises for most people.
 
Councillor Paul Denham, Labour’s public transport spokesman at the County Council, is concerned that many bus users on low incomes have to spend so much of their hard-earned cash just to get to and from work.
 
Many residents, including those with disabilities, do not have cars and rely on the buses to get to shops or visit doctors and hospitals.
 
“It is scandalous,” says Cllr Denham, “that our Conservative-led County Council halved the subsidy to the bus companies. Since then, fares have gone through the roof, services have got worse and some routes have been cancelled. I know local people who are housebound since their local bus route was cancelled and now many others are complaining over these latest fare hikes. Even with these latest increases, services in the evenings are almost non-existent in many parts of the city.
 
“The Tory leadership of our county council has nothing to say about these increases. They don’t seem to care about people struggling to exist financially and entirely dependent on buses to get about.

Many school children from poorer families receive their main (and sometimes only) meal of the day at school. It is well known that children who are under-nourished are much more likely to fall behind at school, so the government’s new policy to provide free hot meals for all children in their first three years at school from this September is a welcome proposal.

However, the policies of previous governments mean that many schools are without kitchens. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government decreed that schools no longer needed to provide hot meals and Worcestershire’s Tory-controlled county council was one of the first councils to do so.

Primary age children entitled to free school meals were given packets of sandwiches which identified them to other pupils. Kitchens were converted for other uses and new schools were built without them.

Schools without kitchens are now expected to provide free hot meals by September. Some do not have sufficient space to seat pupils for lunch and will need multiple sittings which require more supervision and impact on lesson times.

Government has made funding available for schools to improve their catering facilities, which schools have to apply for. Questions still exist over whether there is enough cash to do the work and whether there is enough time to provide the facilities.

Some Worcestershire schools are to have meals delivered from outside caterers and other schools but that might mean that their meals are lukewarm, not hot, when served.