Birmingham City Council has announced plans to set up a special charitable trust to support moves to make it safer, easier and more attractive for children to walk or cycle to and from school.
Building on existing council initiatives, the trust will hand out grants – initially of a maximum of £1000 – to schools and parent groups.
The money will go on projects including school travel plans, fluorescent tabards for 'walking buses', children’s road safety training sessions, training for staff and parents, signage and publicity materials.
Council leader Cllr John Clancy said: 'We've already done lots of work, for example, in introducing 20mph limit zones, traffic calming measures and developing better cycling and walking routes.
'But we know that there will be some very specific things needed to address local circumstances. The new trust will give citizens a way to unlock funding for measures other than physical highways improvements that make their areas better places in which to live'.
The council is contributing an initial start-up endowment of £75,000. It hopes that a household-name national company, with which it is currently in advanced discussions, will round the sum up with £25,000 of sponsorship. It will put the proposal forward for formal approval in September 2016.
Birmingham also acknowledged the role of crossing wardens in individual school travel plans by pledging £750,000 a year from 2017/18 in supporting the presence of patrols at sites identified as having high safety priority.
