ALL school children in Bellerby, Wensleydale, can now enjoy free travel to school thanks to the efforts of one mother.

"I wish I had appealed a long time ago because it would have saved some people a lot of money," said Ms Elaine Sayer.

Until September, parents in Bellerby were paying £63 a term for each child for the two-mile bus journey to and from schools in Leyburn and Ms Sayer pointed out that some parents had two or three children attending schools there.

It was not until her daughter began attending the sixth form college at the Wensleydale school that Ms Sayer was told parents could appeal against the charges.

In September she found she had failed to return a form about bus passes to the county education department. She explained to that department that her daughter could not walk to school because the road was too dangerous.

It was then that she was told that she could appeal against paying the charges on that basis.

Following her appeal, the education department reviewed the road conditions between Bellerby and Leyburn and decided that it was too dangerous for children to walk that way to school.

As Bellerby Parish Council was told recently, this led to free school transport being provided for all the children in the village.

The parish councillors congratulated Ms Sayer for the work involved in making the appeal, which would be of enormous help to other families in Bellerby.

Ms Sayer pointed out that the documentation they had previously received about school bus passes did not state that such appeals were possible.

She was sure that there were other villages in North Yorkshire in a similar situation, given the tremendous increase in traffic on narrow country roads.