Fuel shortages/rationing and exams and training

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Unless something changes rapidly, I fear we will shortly enter a prolonged period of fuel shortages and potential rationing. Some of this will be caused by panic buyers stuffing in a fiver every day and no doubt they’ll queue for hours to get their rationed amount in at every station.
my kids can’t be the only ones with GCSEs and A-Levels who have no reliable public transport option to their rural state school. There was a bus that leaves once a day but when busy it won’t collect from certain stops as this adds time onto the journey. Despite the school campaigning for years the service is wholly unreliable hence getting my eldest a car.

The 12 mile journey is too far to walk or cycle safely. College is rural so no hotel or air bnb. What can be done?
Likewise a friend’s son is an apprentice with a 15 mile journey cross country. No fuel means the apprenticeship is gone. Living away from home for work too.

holy trinity,

Unfortunately OP the knock on effects of fuel rationing will affect things which har a much higher priority than school exams and end of term celebrations.

If you can’t appreciate this then it may be helpful to spend some time thinking about other people’s challenges.

Unfortunately I am not as simple and selfish as you presume. And I never mentioned end of term celebrations- that was someone else - so please RTWT!

many thousands could lose jobs due to fuel rationing and lives could be lost due to a lack of power supplies to those who rely on ventilators etc. then of course there are the lives that are lost by war, food shortages, starvation, I could go on.

personally I think finishing A-levels should be planned for in these circumstances so grades can be obtained to meet requirements for degree places offered. Especially should the majority of other children be sitting those same exams but benefitting from city living.

JCQ do have rules for emergencies and can do things like remote invigilation and invigilation using other schools or facilities like village halls. Have a look at the regs. Hopefully it won’t come to it but there will be a rule for it

Daughter has tried to fill up in our nearest town today, no fuel at all despite ten pumps between the two petrol stations. Fortunately managed to fill up in our tiny village.

Funnily enough I'm banking on that! I'll go to the place that's £1.95 for diesel instead of tesco which is 20p cheaper.

Pay more to ensure I can fill up.

I fill my vw passat estate car every week to ten days, which covers driving to work, driving to kids school a few times a week for various things, driving to parents house 40miles away. It's going to get expensive.

Exactly. It might get very expensive, it might get rationed (but in a half hearted way, like limiting pumps to x value, but not stopping people using several pumps or stations)

they can't organise a party in a pub, let alone genuine fuel restrictions.

IF it got to a stage where kids can't get to school for exams (because parents couldn't buy fuel) we'd be FUCKED by far more worrying things than kids not sitting exams.

And where do you suppose they're getting fuel from? The fuel fairy??

if they dont have the fuel then theres no taxis available ?

@TwoTuesday Jesus fucking Christ - don't do that! No one should be storing jerry cans of petrol in their property.

That is due to panic buying causing sine shortages. Not actually a fuel shortage.

people don't learn. Panic buying alters the regular supply needs & causes problem ms tgst wouldn't exists if people just stuck to their usual buying patterns.

but at an individual level that's hard to do when other people are panic buying & causing issues. If we were more community minded this wouldn't be a problem, .

Then suggesting the OP uses taxis is a bit daft, is it not??

I know I just didn't have the words!

Do your DC have any friends that live within walking distance of the school that they could stay with? Or a distant relative? Alternatively closer to the time I would advertise exactly what you are looking for - a host family to have you DC during exam period. You could meet them in advance and agree a fee.

I live on a farm, I get that you are just planning for possibilities.

The school will be incredibly keen to get your DCs to their exams. They will do everything in their power to help.

Plenty of parents with EVs who would help I'm sure. If it came to it a solution would be put together, I'm sure. Same with help for the chemo trips. Make sure you are in all the local Facebook groups.

I agree it's very worrying and the government playing it down and saying 'Keep calm and carry on' is ridiculous. We know shortages are coming, the papers are full of articles about it, so I think it would be reassuring to know that plans are in place. Obviously, there are certain vehicles that need to be fuelled as a priority - ambulances, police cars, lorries that deliver food to supermarkets, public transport of all kinds, but what about the rest of us? I'm not going to go into our personal circumstances, but suffice it to say that many people can't just hole up at home and not drive anywhere for months! We have DC to get to school with no public transport options, people need to get to work, to hospital appointments, care for relatives, shop, etc.

I had a long row with my local council about paying for transport to school. They kept on telling me they only had to pay for disabled children. Not true. Eventually, I had the idea of looking up the regulations on the gov website and if your kids are at the nearest suitable school, they are supposed to pay (unless of course it is walkable which it obviously isn’t in your case). Once I found the actual rules, I wrote to them quoting from them and they caved in straight away. I’m sure they knew the rules all along but were lying to me. They paid for a taxi.

Here is the government document:

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/659d7ebb0dd0a200138b612a/Travel_to_school_for_children_of_compulsory_school_age.pdf

Electric cars, taxis and buses also exist in 2026?

Teacher here. You don’t consider that most teachers don’t live in their catchment area and as such will not be able to get to School. We’re not a priority for fuel, nor should we be.

Less than 20% of the oil that is refined to make petrol in the uk comes from the gulf. Mostly it comes from Norway, Africa and USA. We are in the global market and it will be expensive but petrol will be available. We all need to reduce our use now and cut back on unnecessary journeys. The government need to get the message over to the public now and stop people panicking. You’ll always get Mr Brown down the road who usually buys £ 20 a month as he doesn’t drive much filling his car to the brim.

i had my dad telling me to fill up and I said no because that’s not my usual pattern. He gets to 3/4 full and tops up so I said keep doing that. I get to 1/4 full and fill the tank which is what I’ll do otherwise I’m just contributing to the issue

Depends on how bad the rationing is. I doubt that schools would be a priority. More likely things like ambulances and lorries transporting food etc.

There’s a legal limit on how much petrol you can store at home and in what containers. It’s not a lot. Basically enough for your lawnmower or chainsaw or similar

Food will be interesting in very rural areas as the supermarket deliveries vans often dont deliver even when it’s booked and it’s too far to walk to the shop and I couldn’t transport the shopping back on my bike

If you'd read my other posts, you'd see that was what I'd said.

in this post I was simply pointing out that taxi drivers don't have any special fuel supply & that if the op couldn't get fuel, suggesting she uses taxis is daft.