Road Safety: Schools

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the second time this afternoon, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth) on securing this important debate and the powerful speech she gave. I add my condolences to the family of her constituent who so tragically died outside their school.

Road safety is something that we have to take incredibly seriously. This is the second debate in Westminster Hall this week on the subject of road safety, and I thank all hon. Members who have spoken powerfully in it. One death on the roads is one death too many, and it is particularly painful when the life lost is that of a child, who had so much in front of them and a whole life to live. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chester South and Eddisbury said, in each and every one of them was so much potential.

The risk profile in such accidents involving a child is self-evidently higher, and the impact on the lives of those around them is unimaginable. I do not think any of us—unless any Member has been in that place—can imagine the pain, horror and emotional rollercoaster that people go through in that nightmare scenario.

It is of no solace whatsoever to those families who have lost a loved one, but it is important to reflect that there has been some significant progress in the right direction in recent years and decades. It is welcome that the rate of child pedestrians killed or seriously injured has fallen by nearly 41% since 2010. That is not to say that there is anything good about people losing their lives; every life lost is an absolute tragedy. However, that decrease does show that there is a positive trajectory and direction of travel. We need to get it to zero, but my central point is that we are not in a place where the statistics are going up or the problem is becoming worse. That is not to say that there is not a lot still to do. For child cyclists, the rate of those killed or seriously injured has also decreased by 43% since 2010.

More broadly, the improvements across all road categories mean that, although there is more to do, the UK remains a world leader in road safety. According to the Department for Transport’s own figures, released in September last year, Great Britain ranked third out of 33 countries in 2023 for the lowest number of road fatalities per million of the population. That progress is reflected in child pedestrian fatalities, which have thankfully fallen; having regularly exceeded 100 a year, they are now consistently in the 20s. That is 20 too many, but it is a significant decrease.

However, challenges clearly remain. DFT data equally demonstrates that, up to the age of 11, pedestrian boys are twice as likely to be killed or seriously injured as pedestrian girls of the same age, and among those aged 12 to 15, boys are still 33% more likely to be killed or seriously injured. What discussions has the Minister had with local authorities, schools and the Department for Education, not just about how we solve the overall problem of improving road safety around schools, but about effective approaches to reduce this particular disparity?

Our focus has to be on making every possible move to improve road safety around schools. That is very much on my mind in my constituency, which is entirely rural, through a lens that is slightly different but makes the point well. A proposed anaerobic digester in one village would bring hundreds of additional HGV movements past schools, including those in Long Crendon and Oakley. It focuses the mind to think just how close so many of our schools—particularly those in rural villages—are to the fast-moving lanes and major routes that people use on a daily basis. The prospect of those dangerous, incredibly heavy HGVs being added to those roads focuses the mind even more.

I am very sympathetic to the ideas that my hon. Friend the Member for Chester South and Eddisbury and others have mentioned about specific speed limits in the vicinity of schools. That is always, and has to be, a decision taken locally by local authorities. I do not think there is a definite, one-size-fits-all solution for every single circumstance that central Government should dictate, but it is for central Government to ensure that the framework is there to make it easy for local authorities to put in place such speed limits where they wish to, and to put in place effective enforcement mechanisms.

It is all too often the case in my constituency—and, I dare say, in everybody else’s—that when a community comes forward and says it wants a particular change to road safety measures, such as a change in the speed limit to 20 mph, the hoops it has to jump through are so considerable, so difficult and involve so many different agencies that frustration sets in. In too many cases, nothing ever happens, or something a bit half-hearted happens. I encourage the Minister to look at what can be done to ensure that local authorities, when taking decisions on behalf of communities that want those changes, are able to do so easily and without the heavy-handed bureaucracy that too often goes with all these schemes. I encourage her in particular to ensure that schools themselves can go to their local authorities and get those changes made quickly.

I conclude by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Chester South and Eddisbury once more on securing this debate. I hope it prompts real and significant action from the Government.