Saving Devon’s threatened ‘Lollipop’ school crossing patrols from the financial axe should be a top priority in the county council budget, say Liberal Democrat councillors campaigning to protect the service.

Set against overall budget cuts totalling £34 million, due mainly to a huge fall in Government support for Devon, saving all the school crossing patrols is just £154,000, said Cllr Alan Connett, Leader of the Liberal Democrats at County Hall.

School crossing patrols, our Lollipop men and women, provide a really important service at the key road safety sites across Devon. They give parents peace of mind and reassurance when sending their children to school.

Under the plans by Conservative run County Hall, funding for all the ‘front line’ school crossing patrols would be scrapped – but the administration staff responsible for running the service would remain. It’s hard to believe, but as it stands, the county council will scrap the very service people pay their council tax for, but the ‘admin’ will remain unaffected. We have challenged this before and never got a satisfactory answer.

We all know the Devon County Council needs to save money and in our view, we think other savings could be made or we can look at how we could run the school crossing patrols differently and at less expense. For example, we could give grants to the relevant schools to keep their crossing patrols and do away with the administration that County Hall, appears so keen to keep.

The Government has yet to confirm the final amount of grant money it will give to Devon County Council to help run local services from April this year.

The Lib Dems, joined by other councillors speaking at the county council’s budget scrutiny meeting, called for urgent consideration to saving the school crossing patrol service, along with more money to improve road drainage and support for the county’s Citizens Advice Bureaux, if the Government grant is better than expected.

The final decision on the county council’s budget, along with the level of Council Tax, is likely to be made on 23 February. It’s then the decision will be made on the future of Devon’s schools ‘Lollipop’ men and women. You can sign the petition here: http://newtonabbotlibdems.org/en/petition/save-our-school-crossing-patrols