At today's Cabinet Meeting Labour Cabinet Member for Highways, Dean Collins, promised he would look to installing cameras at school crossings to replace School Crossing Patrols that his administration is cutting. 

Conservative Deputy Leader and Shadow Highways Cabinet Member for Highways, Simon Spencer said,

"Dean clearly doesn't know what he's doing and is somewhat out of his depth. He was fumbling for ideas to placate protestors in the meeting and has made promises he's going to find very difficult and expensive to deliver.

There's currently no legislation that could support placing cameras on school pelican crossings, it is an area that raises all sorts of safeguarding issues, as well as logistical and technical issues.  It will be interesting to see how he will try to implement this and we look forward to hearing more from Cllr Collins." 

The promise was made after protestors raised issues that removing highly visible school crossing patrols from schools would lead to potential accidents. They raised issues about drivers ignoring traffic lights and crossings and told of their experiences of near misses. Cllr Collins then said he was looking at cameras as an option and made promises to look at installing them at crossings to catch wrongdoers. Current legislation makes this extremely difficult and there are several technical and legal issues that would need to be overcome, making the scheme expensive and untenable. 

Cllr Barry Lewis, Conservative Leader, said,

"What Labour have failed to grasp is the school crossing patrol service is about preventing accidents and conflict outside schools, it is not about recording incidents or fining drivers for a mistake they really shouldn't be making in the first place. Councillors really should think carefully before making statements on the hoof that shows up their lack of knowledge."