Arrochar and Sandbank parents protest: a defining moment in Argyll politics

Three stories in one: a very real case of child safety, a spirited protest and local politics on the brink of redundancy.

The dangers is this case – in personal safety for the children concerned and in credibility for politics itself – are equally real.

The parents of primary schoolchildren at Arrochar in Lomond and Sandbank, outside Dunoon in Cowal, were protesting at the August meeting of the full Council at Kilmory in Lochgilphead.

Their joint concerns focused on highly questionable decisions by Argyll and Bute Council to classify clearly dangerous walking routes to these primary schools as ‘safe’ – a judgment admittedly based upon the need to save money by cutting as many free school bus services as possible.

Malcolm MacFadyen, the senior Council staffer involved, said at a meeting in Arrochar on Tuesday night that the Council would save £100,000 per annum through these actions – hence the question on the T-shirt (lead photo) of the pre-school child from Sandbank who is due to walk the disputed road crossing to his school in a year’s time.

Despite the physical, factual and photographic evidence provided, the Council has clung to that ‘safe’ classification when the assessments of each route were, for different reasons, profoundly flawed and their conclusions far removed from reason and common sense.

We have seen a letter emailed by Mr MacFadyen to the Arrochar parents at 5.00pm yesterday, flatly insisting that, on further consideration the road remains avowedly ‘safe’ – but giving no reasons why the specific positions put forward at the meeting he had attended the night before have been disregarded.

While this stance may be seen as politically necessary, it is unintelligent, abuses the intelligence of these obviously able parents -  and discredits capable council officers.

The Arrochar case

At Arrochar, only two weeks before the start of term today (19th August 2010), parents were given the Council decision to remove the school bus and replace it with a given walking route, declared safe’ for the village tinies to walk the all-but-two miles to Tarbet.

Part of this route – Church Road – has no footpaths at all and its sightlines have been declared by Council planners so poor as to refuse planning permission for homes on that road. Nevertheless these sightlines are deemed ‘safe’ for low profile children.

Worst of all, the tinies must walk the 60mph limit section of the A83, the arterial trunk road through Argyll from Glasgow to Campbeltown, carrying regular timber lorry, coach and heavy truck movements.

There are two red-flag danger sections on this part of the ‘safe’ route.

• One is the point where children emerging from Church Road onto the A83 must cross directly to the other side to reach the footpath to Tarbet. The reality of this chicken-run is seen graphically in the photograph below right – taken at this very point. This is a far from abnormal scene, with traffic regularly broaching the footpath even when faced with less space-hungry vehicles. And static caravans are frequently transported on this road to the many caravan parks of Cowal, Mid Argyll and Kintyre.
• The other is in the approaches and narrow passage below the rail bridge over the A8 outside Tarbet. Large trucks and buses often meet each other at that point, ‘bumping’ or mounting the kerb to avoid touching.The non-existent tolerance here is shown in the photograph below left. Where two large vehicles meet at this point – a frequent occurrence here, the near side one often has no recourse but to broach the footpath.

At the most generous measurement of 70cms, the footpath in this passage is considerably – one foot – narrower than the 100cms, or one metre, the guidelines require.

From our own experience, the width of the footpath at this point is just about passable for a single adult A mother could not keep her child at her side at this point of greatest danger.

A mother with a push chair carrying a baby as well as dealing with an ambulatory infant – or two – on their way to school, simply could not ensure her children’s safety here with any certainty.

The Arrochar parents point out that the Council are obliged to pay for a large bus for 2010-2011 – the last of a three year contract. This is the very bus that would have carried the Arrochar children had its free use not been withdrawn from them in favour of the David and Goliath dodgems promised by the A83 and the Tarbet rail bridge.

They are therefore asking, since it would involve no additional cost to the Council, to be allowed to continue to send their children on this bus to Tarbet School for the coming year, while a credible assessment of the ‘safe’ walking route is carried out.

The assessment the Council has used as the basis for its decision was carried out during the week of the  re-routing of much traffic away from this section of the A83, while the A85 was closed at Cruachan because of a train derailment.

They point out that Arrochar is only just inside the two-mile limit beyond which the free bus service is provided.

They are asking, on the grounds of the manifestly unsafe sections of the road their children are now supposed to walk, for the Council to apply the ‘local flexibility’ allowed by the Scottish Government’s guidelines for the provision of free bus transport.

The Sandbank case

Parents at Sandbank Primary School were given, on 11th May 2010,  the Council’s decision to withdraw the free bus service to the school. They are under one and a half miles from the school.

When parents queried the decision at once, pointing out the safety issues endemic in the walking route that had been approved, they were told that the Council would then conduct an assessment of the route.

This had clearly not already been done as part of the decision taking process. The report on the findings of the assessors is dated 19th May 2010 – and obligingly found the route recommended to be ‘safe’.

The red-flag danger on this route is the crossing to the school. A rise in the road blinds traffic to the presence of small children in the dip and equally blinds the children to approaching danger.

The Council’s solution has been to install ‘Twenty’s Plenty’ notices on either side of the crossing -  but local evidence is that traffic ignores this limit.

At issue also is the number of traffic movements at the critical point – the Council’s assessment figures and an independent count done at the same time of day by parents differ wildly.

A further and key issue is the ‘gap frequency’ – the time it takes for a car – once seen – to pass the crossing point. This is the time available for tinies – and for mothers with push chairs and walking children – to cross the road safely.

The parents dispute both the Council’s figures and the viability of the gap officially accepted as a ‘safe’ time to cross.

The protest

Some Councillors arrived early to avoid eyeballing those their decisions have imperilled.

Some – like Councillor Mary Jean Devon from Mull (above), even though she was hobbling on crutches, nevertheless found it preferable to manoeuvre via a couple of dog legs around the back of parked cars and vans to slide in to the Council building behind the protestors.

Others stopped, listened – perhaps more apparently than really, in some cases – and talked.

The Arrochar cavalcade came with a vehicle equipped with a sound system they put to good use. One parent used the microphone to sing a parody of the Balamory song:

‘What’s the story at Kilmory?
What’s the story today?
The Council has taken the buses away
And now they have to pay’.

Councillor Gordon Chalmers from Mull was first engaged in conversation by a wonderfully determined grandmother, Mrs Graham from Arrochar, before he parked his car – but then came over to talk further with the protestors. He said that he accepts that cuts are inevitable but has taken a decision to fund personally the bus journey to school for one pupil in his ward.

The problem here is that, while Councillor Chalmers gesture reflects a rare sense of personal responsibility,  Councillors seem to have accepted the need for ‘cuts’ in a blanket, undiscriminating sort of way, without stopping to identify the indefensible.

Senior managers – like Douglas Hendry – came out to talk to the parents not long before 11.00am -  a cynic might suggest that one of his aims was to distract them from entering the building to take the seats at the Council meeting that members of the public are entitled to do. Journalists took note of all. Under pressure from focused parents from both communities, which he handled gracefully, at one point he almost physically took a swerve.

The protest was punctuated by openly contemptuous megaphone remarks to Councillors scurrying inside:

• ‘Have a good lunch at our expense’.
• ‘Don’t forget to put in for your expenses’.

Councillor Vivian Dance stopped to talk and became an object of keen interest by one of the victims of the Council’s decision.

The elegant Elaine Robertson and the lively Donnie MacMillan, arriving earlier, spent time with the well-informed and politely forceful Rycroft family from Sandbank.

Councillor Robert MacIntyre from Bute, Deputy Leader of the Council, told the parents he had already milked his cows – probably as an ice-breaker. Parents – voters – don’t always realise what an exotic and unnerving experience it is for politicians at any level to meet them at close quarters.

The second Arrochar protest – on STV’s main television news

The Arrochar parents then had a prior appointment in the afternoon with an outside broadcast unit from STV – who filmed a major clip with commentary for the 6.00pm news tonight.

The images as well as the words told the required story – as did the children themselves.

This exposure proves two things to a blinkered Council:

• this is a story that is attractive to the national as well as the local media
• the Arrochar parents’ team is resourceful and can deliver attention to its case.

The practical issues

These are only two of several schools in Argyll angered by cuts-driven ‘safe’ classifications of walking routes for small children in place of the former free bus service. Stewarton in Kintyre is another; we are aware of one in North Argyll; and some time ago we covered the dispute in Ardrishaig.

In the case of Arrochar at least, the Council will save no money this year by its decision since it must pay for a large bus anyway – which will now travel largely empty, pass some of the Arrochar tinies on the narrow and footpathless Church Road and endanger others in the tight passage under the rail bridge at Tarbet. How do you defend a situation so patently daft? It is wise not to try – but, on past performance, this is not a wisdom Argyll and Bute Council collectively possesses.

Then there is the question of the Judicial Review that many schools are likely to take, unable to get leverage on the Council decision any other way.  They will identify a parent who can qualify for legal aid and fight the case through that parent.

The Council however will have to pay for a legal team to defend each such Judicial Review.

How much will be left from the £100,000 the Council estimates it should save by thee measures after its muiltiple legal fees have been paid?

By any criterion it would be a serious failure of judgment for the Council to spend money on lawyers rather than on providing a service to the young children who will be their future electors.

The political issue

This is actually very serious. The standing in the public eye of politics and politicians is already very  low. Anything that further reduces the credibility of what should be the epitome of public service will widen the gap between politicians and their electorate to a dangerous degree.

Where an increasing gulf opens up between poorly evidenced but stubbornly held political decisions and common sense, the integrity of politics is seen to suffer and the possibility of understandable civil disobedience becomes ever more real.

If this should happen, the authorities will have abandoned their moral authority to resist such action.

If our politicians at all levels do not grasp the risk they are running of irreparable damage to the social fabric of the nation by such conduct, there may be a time when they find themselves set aside by an electorate which withdraws from them the authority it currently confers.

Two challenges

It would be interesting to see Malcolm MacFadyen, for example – and there are alternatives – take a child in a push chair and two walking infants and, single-handedly, steer the caravan safely from Arrochar to Tarbet school.

If young mothers are expected to do it, a mature professional male should have no problems.

The second challenge would be the production of documents attesting to the lack of safety of some specific walking routes to some schools in Argyll – assuming that some have been found to be unsafe.

For Argyll has submitted a request to the Council for such information – and on any reclassifications made in either direction – under Freedom of Information legislation.

The comparisons between routes classified ‘safe’ and those classified ‘unsafe’ should be illuminating and the reasons for both decisions helpful to know.

One thing is certain. The parents we saw today are focused, resourceful and determined. They are not going away. Stubborn resistance will only drive them to publicise even more an inglorious chapter in Argyll and Bute Council’s history.

It is hard to see the Ombudsman and a Judicial Review seeing unequivocal rightness in the Council decision.

Who would ever think it was defensible to save a corporate pittance at the expense of child safety?