Single mum angry over daughter left stranded

A MOTHER struggling to get her 11-year-old daughter to school has criticised the county council for failing to help her.

Single mum Cheryl Hazlewood has hit out at council policy, which left her daughter Aimee stranded at their council house in Lauriston Place, King's Hedges, after plans to move to a new Circle 33 Housing Association home in Cambourne were delayed.

She said: "We're council tenants and were told our new home in Cambourne would be ready in August, so I enrolled Aimee at Comberton Village College.

"As the summer went by the move was put off, and now we're expecting to move in late-October - meanwhile Aimee is stuck. I can't drive, I have two little children Brittany, six, and Ashley, three, to look after, and the council is refusing to give us any help at all.

"I spoke to one of their advisers and was told 'you put her there, you're the one who has to get her there'. They told me Aimee had to get a bus into Drummer Street, then another from Cambridge city into Comberton in time for the start of school at 8.15am.

"There's no way I'm doing that - she'd have to leave the house at 6.45am every day. And it's not reasonable to send her to a more local school for a month or two then ask her to move - she's finding it hard enough to start at a new school as it is.

"Anyway, I'm a single mum and couldn't afford the £200 uniform she needs at Comberton - to buy two uniforms would have been impossible."

A spokesman for the county council said: "We sympathise with the situation Cheryl Hazlewood finds herself in.

"We understand she is one of several families promised homes in Circle 33 housing in Cambourne which have not been completed in time.

"Apart from being obliged to follow national policy on transporting pupils to school, it would be prohibitively expensive to provide transport individually for every pupil affected by the delay in Cambourne as they would be coming from all parts of the county.

"Ms Hazlewood has two options, she can send her daughter to Coleridge Community College until the Cambourne house is ready or apply to the county council to have her case reviewed.

"We would be very happy to help her with either course of action."

As reported in the Cambridge Evening News