Notice of representations to be given in writing or by email by 12 noon, Thursday 24 February 2022 to the Council’s Monitoring Officer (committeeservices@wirral.gov.uk) and to be dealt with in accordance with Standing Order 11.1.

Petitions may be presented to the Committee. The person presenting the petition will be allowed to address the meeting briefly (not exceeding one minute) to outline the aims of the petition. The Chair will refer the matter to another appropriate body of the Council within whose terms of reference it falls without discussion, unless a relevant item appears elsewhere on the Agenda. Please give notice of petitions to committeeservices@wirral.gov.uk in advance of the meeting.

Petition Presented by Pupils of Woodlands Primary School

Good evening everyone. My name is Yasin.

Do you want to help us be healthy and help the environment? Children are taught how to be safe in the world from when we are little. Our families, our teachers, the Council, campaigners and the police all have a hand in educating us. What do we do when some grown-ups who are meant to know better don’t always follow the rules or consider their own safety for us children? At our amazing school at Woodlands Primary, we are having great trouble with road safety and our lives are at risk.

We are here to ask you to help us, but not only to feel better but physically be safer. Some of our parents are parking all over the place. They are ignoring yellow lines and zigzags. They are not mindful of our residents. They are ignoring our safety. We have had two children involved in accidents on our road, and countless terrifying near misses. There are residential parking spaces on one side which narrows the road even more. The lack of space makes people behave strangely and everyday cars are facing each other trying to bully their way through, then arguing in front of young children about who is right and wrong. We have a photo of an example of dangerous parking on pavement by drivers, meaning we children have to walk on the road with traffic to get past.

Where our original school was built, we had a one-way system and speed bumps to take care of our past pupils. What about our present pupils and our future selves? Just imagine a child getting knocked down and seriously hurt. This happens. Children die on dangerous roads. What if that’s someone we know? Or it could be me or you. There are two schools close to each other, that is hundreds of families. We need your help. Will you protect us? Will you give us our rights to safety? Prevention is better than cure. Don’t let me be afraid every day from a real threat. Please help us. One world. One home. One chance. Thank you for listening.

Response: Thank you very much for taking the time to attend. It is very much appreciated. As a mum and as a teacher, safety around schools is something I feel very strongly about indeed. Everybody in the room has sympathy with what you are saying as well.

We really do want to provide all children in Wirral with the opportunity to walk, cycle and scoot to schools safely, without fear of traffic. We have actually got some excellent projects. The road safety team are doing some really good work with a variety of schools. We’re trialling different things across the borough. The school has actually been invited to join us already in working on some of these projects and we’d like to extend again that invitation to join us and work with us, alongside a dedicated Active Travel officer, and work with the whole school community to get on board not just those of you who are already aware of the problems, and suffering from the problems, but also the members of your school community who were quite rightly highlighted by the children as causing the problem, because most of the problem is the school run around schools. So you have identified the problem correctly and our team will work with you. We will extend that offer again. We’ve not heard back from the school, if we hear back we’d be delighted to work with the school. We’re particularly keen to work with schools who really want to be on board like this. It is very clear now that we’ve got families in your school who really do want to do this.