00:00Chilmington Green School has a lot going for it.
00:03A good Ofsted report, a sleek, modern building.
00:07There is one big problem for parents though.
00:10The school is in the middle of nowhere and there's no bus links to get here.
00:15I think it's a bit silly really because they haven't sorted out any of the roads or anything
00:18like that around here, like for the children to have bus stops or to have a bus come through
00:23here.
00:24It's dangerous.
00:25It's not going to be long until there's an accident and some child's going to get hurt.
00:28Without public transport options, children have to make their own way back to Ashford
00:34despite nearby 40mph traffic.
00:38I've had loads of emails and I've had contact with different parents who send the children
00:42here who have all been worried about the route that the children are going to have to take.
00:47And today I'm here on behalf of my residents.
00:49I think it's not acceptable that that room is legally deemed safe, but if that was my
00:54child I wouldn't be happy with that.
00:55They're working on grass verges in 40mph zones.
00:59It's not just the nearby fast roads either.
01:03This public footpath, just a hop, skip and a jump from the school gates, has no street lighting.
01:09That means pupils could be walking home in the dark here during the winter.
01:14Highways and roads are the responsibility of Kent County Council and it says there is a
01:20safe route between Ashford and the school despite hundreds signing an online petition
01:27calling for a bus service to be introduced.
01:30We have to make sure that she's driven here because there's no way the safe walking route
01:34is safe for her to get here.
01:36I would never let any child walk that route.
01:38It was nearly three miles long.
01:40It was pitch black dark.
01:42We did it of an evening and it was pitch black dark through fields.
01:45There was no paths.
01:46The school was not designed to be isolated for long.
01:49All of these surrounding fields are supposed to be filled with thousands of houses in the coming years.
01:56Well, that was until the site's developers folded just a few months ago.
02:01KCC says the money for local transport would have been provided by them.
02:07And with no local operators currently planning to run a service,
02:12it appears both the development and the school bus have hit a roadblock.
02:17Ollie Leader at Chilmington Green
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