DISABLED father David Walker has criticised Wiltshire County Council for refusing to pay for his teenage son's railway journey to college.

James Walker, 15, from The Knapp in Great Bedwyn was featured in the Gazette in December last year when his father took him out of John O'Gaunt School in Hungerford.

It was alleged that the school unfairly excluded James for misbehaving, disobedience and rudeness to staff .

The teenager and his father claimed that his behaviour was due to the fact that the school would not accept James was being bullied.

James said he was taunted with the fact he was Jewish and, he believed, bullied for the same reason.

The school accepted there had been racist taunts but said they were dealt with at the time of the incident.

James started an NVQ catering course at Newbury College at the beginning of this term.

Mr Walker said the family assumed that as Wiltshire Education Authority had paid the travel costs to John O' Gaunt school for James and other Bedwyn students they would pay his travel costs to Newbury.

Newbury College is just 12 miles from Bedwyn by train while Swindon College, the alternative suggested by Wiltshire LEA, is almost 20 miles away and involves two bus rides.

However the Wiltshire LEA has declined to pay saying that James should have gone to what they say is his local college in Swindon where the same catering course is offered.

That is ridiculous, said Mr Walker, because the family lives just one minute from Bedwyn Station where James can get on a train and be in Newbury in 15 minutes where a free coach picks up students going to the town's college.

Mr Walker said: "Getting a bus to Swindon from Great Bedwyn takes at least an hour and a half."

Mr Walker, who lives on disability benefit, said he could not afford the £240 a year train fares for James to go to Newbury College and he believed bus fares to Swindon would be even more costly.

He said: "How come Wiltshire says it will not pay for him to go to a college in Berkshire yet they paid for the bus that took him and other Great Bedwyn pupils to school in Berkshire?"

An LEA spokesman said: "The position is we will not pay travel costs for young people to any other than their local college if the course they want is available there. There is a similar course at the college in Swindon."

The spokesman added: "The reasoning is based on locality and cost."

Mr Walker has asked Devizes MP Michael Ancram to investigate.