DORSET County Council is putting on four buses a day to take pupils 800 metres to and from a school after ruling the road is too dangerous to walk.

The authority confirmed the service is costing £250 a day – close to £50k a school year.

Campaigners have been fighting for 30 years to get a footpath so children can walk to Salway Ash School safely and the council has £100,000 in its budget to put one in.

Last autumn about 100 people walked the route along the busy B3162 to focus attention on the lack of a safe footway.

After the walk, the county council did a safety audit and ruled the road was too dangerous to walk and has now put on a mini bus for the students.

Parent Sara Bennett, who has been campaigning for six years, said: “It just goes on from one ridiculous thing to another.

“We were hoping that the safety audit would say they had to put a footpath in but instead they have put a bus on and it is only about 820 metres.

“On the face of it, it is ridiculous.”

She said the good thing was that now the county was faced with paying for the bus the footpath was being given a greater priority.

She said: “It has been very frustrating.”

Head teacher Lisa Crew said it was a very sad situation. She said: “The traffic survey decided the road was unsafe to walk on and it was the county council’s responsibility to make it safe for the children so they have put on a mini bus.

“The minibus has to do a double trip because there are too many children.”

Mrs Crew said there had been another meeting with the county council this week to discuss the situation.

She said: “The complication is knowing how to go ahead with building the footpath, there is not an obvious method.”

She said parents were using the bus to support the cause to show how many children would otherwise walk. Mrs Crew added: “I think the footpath is a good thing because we are all encouraged to exercise children more and to be greener. The people in the village certainly want to do that and I certainly want to keep the relationship and contact with the parents at the school gates, which is what a village school is all about and we are going to lose that which is very sad.”

Dorset county councillor Rebecca Knox said the money for the footpath was still in the budget.

“But we are still trying to find out the best type of path and which one works safely for the children and also the road, which is a pretty fast road,” she said.

“It has been on-going for I believe about 20 years and it is partly that the county council highways don’t own land either side of the road.”

Coun Toni Coombs, Dorset County Council Cabinet member for education said: “Until we can find a permanent solution, we have introduced a school bus to ensure the safety of the children, as it was unacceptable for them to walk along the road to school.

“It currently costs the county council £250 per day to run the bus service while we actively pursue a new footpath.”