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Friday 19 Dec 2014

Pupils have designs on safety for passengers at Leeds station

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Pupils from Bramley St Peter’s Church of England School, near Leeds, have designed special safety posters for the festive period, which are now on display at Leeds station.

Luke Lazenby, who is 10 years old, recently took part in the Leeds Children’s Mayor competition which sees pupils from Leeds schools write a manifesto based on an issue they believe to be important. Luke chose to write about safety on the edge of train platforms.

Unfortunately another child’s work was chosen to represent St Peter’s at the city-wide competition, but Luke was keen to make Network Rail aware of his work and passion for safety at stations.

Luke met with the community safety manager for the area, Vicky Beadle, and explained his ideas about reminding people to be careful with buggies and prams, and to remind parents about being safe at train stations.

After looking at Network Rail’s safety material, Luke realised nothing specific about this issue was available. Luke was keen on having some posters/signs designed to highlight the problem, and felt he would be helping others by reminding them to keep their brakes on or not overloading buggies with bags.

Luke and five other students decided they would design posters, which Helen Dawson, Leeds station manager, has agreed to display at the busy city station.

Helen said: “I love the posters Luke and his friends have designed for the station, and didn’t hesitate to have them displayed. Over one million people a month use Leeds station, so in one week alone, hundred of thousands of passengers will see their fantastic designs.

“While we don’t have a particular issue with prams falling on to lines at stations, it doesn’t hurt to remind passengers to take care at a big, busy station like Leeds, especially when many people may have buggies and prams loaded with Christmas shopping bags.

“We would remind people to take extra care and allow for extra time to get their trains if they have buggies and prams, and to make full use of our lifts.”

Ms Lesley Dixon-Dawson, a teacher at St Peter’s, said: “Every year we enter the Mayor’s competition, where children write a manifesto about one way to make Leeds more child-friendly.

“This year, there were lots of children who wanted to enter, but we could only enter one child. Unfortunately, Luke’s idea about rail safety wasn’t chosen, but he felt so strongly about the issue, he asked if he could contact Network Rail to see if he could help warn parents about the dangers of buggies rolling on to tracks.

“As a school we constantly encourage children to be active citizens and were delighted with Network Rail’s response to have the children design posters for Christmas.”

Luke said: “I wanted to design a poster that would highlight the problem of overloading buggies or letting them roll onto the track because the brakes hadn’t been put on."

All posters are now displayed within their primary school and the young people have delivered an assembly to all other pupils to raise the awareness about railway safety. The posters are being displayed at Leeds station from today - Friday, 19 December - into the New Year.

Vicky Beadle is also planning to develop a mosaic with the school in 2015, which will be displayed at nearby Bramley station.

The annual Leeds Children’s Mayor Programme is part of Leeds City Council’s ambition to create a more child friendly Leeds. You can find out more by visiting www.breezeleeds.org/leedschildrensmayor