To review the opportunities, and action taken to date, for developing arrangements designed to produce safer routes to schools.

The Committee considered the opportunities and action taken to date for developing arrangements designed to produce safer routes for schools.

The Committee had been informed in March that a need had been identified to ensure that schools benefiting from Safer Routes to School in the future should begin work on developing their own school travel plans.  It had been recognised that additional resources would need to be allocated to support schools in this task.

Funding had been identified within the Local Transport Plan (LTP) to appoint a School Travel Adviser or School Travel Advisers using funding allocated for Safer Routes to School Training Support.  A best practice example in North Yorkshire had recruited qualified teachers as advisers. 

In September 2003, the Government had announced the provision of additional funding over the next 2 years to help support the development of school travel plans.  This would include funding for more local authority based school travel advisers as well as capital resources.  It was proposed to combine these resources with the funding earmarked within the LTP to provide 1 full time co-ordinator and up to 3 part-time teachers.  This would establish a good level of support for Schools seeking to develop a School Travel Plan. 

In the course of discussion the following principal points were made:

·         That an advantage of employing part-time teachers rather than creating an extra post within the Education Department was that they were familiar with the way in which schools operated but did not require the Council to provide them with office space.  The example of North Yorkshire had demonstrated the merits in this approach.

·         The development of travel plans was linked into the curriculum encouraging pupils to participate in developing plans and schools to take ownership of the plans.

·         Some concern was expressed that there were insufficient resources available under the programme to fund bigger schemes such as footpaths to rural schools eg Burghill Primary School.  It was acknowledged that there was a particular difficulty in financing that Scheme.

·         It was asked whether once a scheme had been implemented it was ever re-evaluated as part of a safety audit.  The Senior Transport Planning Manager said that resources did not permit this, however, the relevance of measures should be ensured by reviewing travel plans with each new intake of pupils.  An annual re-survey was part of the Council’s procedure although this was reliant on feedback from parents and schools.  If a particular concern existed this should be reported.  He noted that a number of safety measures were outside the remit of the safer routes to Schools Programme.

·         It was suggested that the proposed approach would place an additional burden on teachers and raise false expectations but would not provide a solution.

·         It was confirmed that the Council was mindful of the opportunities linked to new building developments and travel plans could prove helpful justification in pursuing these.

RESOLVED

That    (a) the proposed arrangements for developing safer routes to schools be generally welcomed but noting

(i)     that the availability of funding for the physical infrastructure for larger schemes needed to be considered;

(ii)   the importance of parental  involvement

(iii)the advantages in safety audits for both new and existing schemes

(iv)the importance of coordination between Directorates

(b) an update be provided in six months time including information showing the output from travel plans to establish that they were providing value for money.