Warwickshire's children to be encouraged to cycle or walk to school - here's how the council plans to make it safer

That is the plan after a working group of county councillors was set up to urge parents to leave their cars at home.

The task and finish group was approved by councillor’s at this week’s (June 17) Warwickshire County Council’s communities overview & scrutiny committee which was held online.

Cllr Jenny Fradgley (Lib Dem, Stratford West) explained: “We should look at walk to school programmes with as many schools as we can.

"It will report back in February so it will be a chunky but rapid piece of work to bring back recommendations from schools as to how we can move forward.”

There was cross-party support for the group with Cllr Keith Kondakor urging that something was done to slow cars down around schools.

He said: “Making roads not being a barrier to people crossing is really important. Housing growth has made roads more of a barrier so I really think we need to review the provision of crossings.

“We also need to be looking at 20mph zones far more widely.

"Sadly we have always had pushback from the officers about the 20mph zones because of the enforceability of them.

"If we had enough of them and a culture where driving fast near schools was unacceptable, then we can make progress."

And Cllr Andy Crump (Con, Southam, Stockton and Napton), the portfolio holder for fire and rescue and community safety, explained some of the measures already in place.

He said: “The road safety teams are going into the schools to educate the children about all sorts of road safety issues and they [the children] are quite good at putting pressure on the parets to slow down and to park sensibly.

“It is amazing how, when the education programme has gone in, it improves the safety in areas around.

“I’m fully supportive of a 20mph zone to make sure we don’t have the accidents in and around our schools.”

A report updating members on school safety zones and routes explained that around 150 schools had benefited from the scheme and that the measures had included extra signs, road markings, bollards, 20mph speed limits, interactive signs, traffic calming, pedestrian crossings, informal crossings and footpaths.