A working party is seeking to improve the safety of automated and manual gates in schools.
As part of the charity Gate Safe’s Safe School Gates initiative, the charity recently held a meeting hosted by the Labour MP for Ashford, in Kent, Sojan Joseph, and attended by representatives from the police, the insurance sector, a UK accident prevention charity and specialists in educational compliance management, to discuss the importance of gate safety in school settings.
Gate Safe shared recent survey findings which indicated that the majority of gates surveyed represent a danger to pupils, staff and visitors. If the survey is representative of gates across the UK, with circa 32,423 schools (including nurseries, early learning centres, primary schools and special schools), this would indicate that there are over 28,000 unsafe gates in operation, it says.
The meeting debated the collective need to raise awareness of the risks associated with an automated and / or manual gate – and the role that schools can play in ensuring the safety of these – in the case of automated gates – machines.
All those attending agreed to join the working party, with a view to organising a Westminster roundtable which would invite others in the field to consider activity designed to initiate change – and to prevent any further accidents occurring.
Richard Jackson, founder of the charity, pictured, said: “We are delighted to have gained the support of the delegates that attended last week’s meeting and to receive such positive feedback in terms of the potential ways we can work together to improve the safety of gates in the school environment. We look forward to sharing further details of the action that has been taken in the coming months.”
Visit https://www.gate-safe.org/.
