FREE bus travel will still be available to youngsters on an "unsafe'' school route for the autumn term.

About 150 pupils of Blackfyne Community, Consett, who live in Leadgate, faced having the concession withdrawn after Durham County Council concluded that their walk to school was no longer hazardous.

Pupils are not eligible for free travel if the routes are considered safe.

But the decision was put on hold when the council's scrutiny committee called for the safety issue to be looked at again.

The council has now drawn up proposed detailed criteria for assessing Blackfyne and other hazardous routes in the county.

Its cabinet has been told that consultation on the new guidelines, with governors, headteachers, headteachers' associations and the Church of England and Roman Catholic Dioceses, will not be completed until the end of the autumn term.

The Blackfyne assessment will be carried out again using the new guidelines, if they are adopted.

In the meantime the pupils will continue to get the free bus travel to school.

Independent councillor Watts Stelling, who fought the decision to remove the concession, said: "It is a stay of execution because we were going to lose the passes in September.

"By the time they start doing the Blackfyne survey again we could be talking about March, the spring. Hopefully that review will say we are going to keep the passes.''

The Labour leader of the council, Ken Manton, said: "We are not in a hurry to do this.

"We want to do it right."