Swansea Council has been hit with a legal bill that could run to around £200,000 after the authority was found to have acted unlawfully in trying to withdraw free buses for pupils at faith schools.
The legal bill to contest a judicial review into the transport decision will cost Swansea £82,481 plus VAT, however the authority must also pay legal costs for the claimants, which are likely to be just as much or more.
The decision and costs are a major blow to the authority which is still trying to save £81m over the next three years and needs to cut £300,000 from its annual school transport budget.
Cllr Jen Raynor, Swansea council’s cabinet member for education, said: ‘Currently £6.8m goes into transporting school children. Given the current funding pressures in education, that is simply not sustainable. That's why, like other local authorities, we have explored changing our transport provision.
‘Our aim is to tackle the issue as fairly as possible within the rules and we have taken every step with professional legal advice.
‘We were suggesting treating faith schools pupils in the same way as the majority of our pupils, who attend non-faith, non-Welsh medium schools. The judge ruled against us, citing indirect racial discrimination. In light of that decision we will be looking at ways in which savings in the overall education budget can be found to offset the savings which were expected from the faith school proposal.’
The legal bill will be funded from the council's contingency budget, not education.
Mr Justice Wyn Williams, presiding judge of the Wales Circuit, struck down a 2014 change of policy at the City and County of Swansea that would have seen the council continue to offer free transport to 12 Welsh language schools, but end it for the six faith schools.
Following complaints by parents at the faith schools, the Judge found that despite its equality impact assessment Swansea had been ignorant of the discriminatory effects of the policy as students were overwhelmingly white in the Welsh language schools and more likely to be from black and minority ethnic communities at the faith schools.
