Road Safety (Schools)

Bucklesham primary school in my constituency—those from the school are watching in the Gallery—knows this challenge all too well. The school sits on the junction of a 60 mph and a 30 mph road. It is an isolated rural school, with no footpaths or homes around it, and parents have no choice but to drive to school each and every day, while navigating awful conditions in the process. Parents and staff have been pleading for improvements for two decades. They have gathered petitions, met councillors, written letters and still, after 20 years, no permanent safety measures have been put in place. I presented a petition to the House in September with over 300 signatures, to highlight the road safety issues outside Bucklesham primary school.

These stories and the many others I have heard since being elected are exactly why I have been campaigning relentlessly to improve road safety around our schools. I have taken that campaign to No. 10 Downing Street, and today I bring it formally to Parliament through this ten-minute rule Bill. The purpose of this Bill is simple: to make it a requirement, not an option, for local authorities to take proactive steps to improve safety around schools where there is evidence of potential risk. This Bill would place a duty on councils to work directly with schools and communities to assess road conditions, listen to local concerns and identify practical solutions. Those measures will of course differ from place to place, because a rural lane in Suffolk looks very different from an urban street in Manchester, but the principle must remain the same that every child, no matter where they live in this country, deserves to travel safely to school.

As my Bill sets out, a package of local solutions might include more double yellow lines and enforced parking restrictions; improved signage and road markings; dedicated school crossings; more lollipop men and women; and reduced-speed zones during drop-off and pick-up hours. In short, schools should not have to campaign for safer roads, and neither should their pleas fall on deaf ears. They should be able to expect safer roads. Our children should be able to travel to and from school each day without fearing the roads outside their schools.

Suffolk has one of the poorest road safety records of any rural county in England. Over the past 20 years, across Suffolk there have been 597 fatalities and 7,000 people have been seriously injured—7,500 lives lost or changed forever. In Suffolk Coastal alone, more than 1,000 people have been either killed or seriously injured on our roads. Tragically, 17 of them were children. These are our children on our roads, and this is our responsibility.

The evidence shows that we can prevent many of these tragedies. The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology has found strong evidence that 20 mph speed limits and zones reduce casualties and fatalities. After Wales introduced a default 20 mph national speed limit on restricted roads, casualties fell by 24% between April and June last year compared with the same period the year before. Parents know this instinctively. Surveys show that 36% of parents feel that roads are too busy for their children to walk to school, and 43% say traffic is too fast even when there is a 20 mph limit. According to Brake, the road safety charity that I have worked with on my campaign and on this Bill, 78% of parents want a 20 mph limit near homes and schools and 85% want the Government to do more to make local roads safer.

Yet the frameworks guiding local road safety decisions mean that too many councils are able to ignore local concerns, even when tragedy strikes. My Bill would end that absurdity and end the crisis at our school gates. It would also make transparency a duty: councils would be required to publish annual statements outlining what safety reviews have been conducted, what measures have been implemented and how they are working with schools and our communities to improve standards. The Government are due to publish a new road safety strategy early next year, the first in a decade. I welcome that, and many of the families and schools I speak to welcome it too, but that strategy must put road safety around our schools at the very top of the list. This Bill would make that possible by setting clear expectations for local authorities and giving schools a voice in shaping the solutions they need.

The answer is painfully simple: we know what makes our roads safer—the measures are well understood and so often inexpensive—but we lack urgency and accountability. We should not accept that parents and schools have been campaigning for 20 years to make drop-off and pick-up safer, yet still have their school hugging a 60 mph road. We should not accept that a child is hit by a van and the road is assessed, yet it still fails to meet self-determined thresholds for intervention. We should never forget that it is in our gift to reduce the leading cause of death among children in this country, simply by improving road safety around our schools.

This is not about politics. I am sure that every Member of this House has stood at a school gate and seen cars speeding too fast and too close, and I am sure every Member has heard the same plea from parents. Roman told me that all he wants is a pedestrian crossing at his school gate. This Bill would seek to give Roman that and to give every school the power to bring forward safety enhancements for their own school. This is a modest Bill, but it is practical, and most importantly it would save lives and help to tackle the biggest cause of death among children. With this Bill, we have the chance to make sure that campaigning is no longer necessary, because safety should be guaranteed by design, duty and law.

That Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, Sarah Coombes, Terry Jermy, Ben Goldsborough, Sarah Dyke, Maya Ellis, Amanda Hack, Mr Richard Quigley, Samantha Niblett, Alison Hume, Steve Witherden and Jodie Gosling present the Bill.

Jenny Riddell-Carpenter accordingly presented the Bill.