Warwickshire County Council has "temporarily paused" its consultation on home-to-school transport cuts but insists options to bring down costs will remain "unchanged" once it returns.

The cabinet – the Reform UK panel of councillors in charge of major service areas – last month agreed to start a public consultation on making "significant changes" to align current eligibility rights with national rules.

The plans is to withdraw assistance in many of the cases where it is not legally obliged in order to bring down costs that have soared from an annual bill of £17.2 million to more than £50 million in seven years.

Such changes must be the subject of public consultation but even that phase concerned councillors and families, the council's own report estimating that more than 1,000 children could be affected. 

The cabinet was also accused of being unclear on what was being proposed and that was followed by leader Cllr George Finch publishing an open letter on social media at the start of October half-term requesting that councils be given delegated power to increase eligibility distances – how far a child lives from their nearest available school. 

As things stand, those aged eight and over are eligible for help if they live three miles from their nearest available school.

Cllr Finch's letter said up to 16 per cent of children could be removed from eligibility if that was increased to five miles one way.

How separate those elements were became clouded when the consultation disappeared from the council's Ask Warwickshire portal but the authority has put it down to a missed out quality check and says the proposals being considered have not been altered. 

A council statement read: "The council has temporarily paused the engagement process to allow time for a final quality assurance review. A step in this process was missed before going live, this was an oversight and we apologise for the delay.

"We're now taking the necessary steps to complete this review. Once the consultation reopens, the options being considered will remain unchanged and everyone will still have a full seven weeks to respond.

It added that those who have already put in responses would not need to do so again, concluding: "This short pause does not affect our commitment to ensuring everyone has the opportunity to share their views."