OXFORDSHIRE County Council’s plan to save £340,000 by cutting its free travel to schools has rapidly turned from a bumpy ride into a full-blown car crash.

And, to be fair, it doesn’t appear like it is all its fault.

The plan to chop back free travel for pupils if they choose to go to a school that was not their nearest school was always going to be controversial. No-one willingly embraces paying for something that was previously free.

However, the council perhaps didn’t realise how much of a hornet’s nest it would stir up. And its initial delivery of the plan was a little muddied – it was unclear at first, for instance, if children forced to go to schools further away because their ‘local’ one was full would also face paying for their transport.

As leader Ian Hudspeth has now admitted, the county was already looking at punting the scheme off for further consultation and, no doubt, investigation.

For a scheme that was juddering badly, the Government has now managed to knock the wheels completely off with its blundering. It has scrapped changes to school transport guidance it issued earlier this year but is rather silent on fully explaining why. It trotted out some line about councils coming back by suggesting “ways in which the guidance could be more helpful”.

The more cynical might read that it was really told its new system was unworkable and so has junked it all and will start again.

No matter what’s really happened behind closed doors, any change is now broken down on the hard shoulder and it is going to take more than a policy recovery van to turn up and give it a jumpstart back into life.