The 11 sets of Keighley parents who have campaigned for three years for free school bus passes for their children must be delighted and relieved today. Their persistence in pursuing their case was vindicated by the Local Government Ombudsman's decision in their favour and now the Council has compensated them.

It is only right that it should have done so. The parents were encouraged, in 1999, to select Parkside School as their preferred choice but were not informed of the potential consequences of that option in terms of assistance with the cost of travelling to school.

They were understandably aggrieved when the authority later withdrew the free travel passes without any consultation with them. Since then they have had to foot the bill for getting their children to and from the school.

The Council should not be criticised too harshly, in principle, for trying to reduce the total cost of free passes for youngsters. After all, it is dealing with public money and owes it to council taxpayers to try to make savings where it can.

However, it seems that in these cases it picked the wrong targets and made mistakes in the way it went about it. All credit to the authority, once the Ombudsman found it guilty of maladministration and pointed out to it the error of its ways, for responding honourably and positively by agreeing to compensate the families and reinstating a number of travel passes until the pupils concerned reach the age of 16. It was a wise response to a sensible judgement.