A FED up Chorley teenager became a TV star for a day after contacting the BBC when she was refused a free school bus pass.

The pupil, who attends Holy Cross High, has to pay £1.50 a day on the bus because education chiefs say she does not live the required three miles away from her school in Burgh Lane, Chorley.

But Hannah Routledge claims the route laid down by the education authority was not safe, and fired off an email to Childrens' BBC show Short Change.

Hannah, 13, a year nine pupil, said: "I've never been able to get a bus pass because you have to live more than three miles away to qualify and I live about 2.9 miles away.

"But the route that the council says I should take is down a quiet path by Merton Grove that gets very overgrown and is too isolated during the winter.

"When the film crew came down we measured the route without going down the path and it was something like 3.7 miles. It's not just me who's affected, there are eleven others around here who go to Holy Cross and we are all in the same situation."

Hannah lives in Sutton Close, Great Knowley, Chorley, with brother Andrew, 19, sister Catherine, 22, and mum and dad Margaret and Bernard, both teachers. It costs them around £222 every year in bus fares.

A BBC camera crew spent a day filming along the route, and presenter Angellica Bell interviewed Hannah at home.

"It was good fun and everyone was lovely," said Hannah, "Angellica was really funny."

The programme will be shown in the new series of Short Change which begins in April.

A spokesman for Lancashire Education Authority confirmed the route that Hannah takes to school was last measured in 2000 and will now be reassessed.