Sometimes rules are put in place for a very good reason

IT’S health and safety gone mad!

You’ll hear this familiar cry up and down the land whenever new rules are brought in for one reason or another.

And, in some cases, the response is justified.

From bans or restrictions on children running in school playgrounds to the binmen banned from wheeling wheelie bins down long driveways and the posties prevented from delivering mail to icy streets, nervous managers often go over the top in their quest to head off workplace injuries and legal action.

According to reports, insurers even ordered Father Christmas to install a roll bar and a seatbelt on his sleigh for his annual 5mph ride through the streets of Brighton and Hove last month.

Insurers told the Brighton Rotary Club, which organises the parade, that without the extra safety measures they would only provide cover if Santa rode in the car pulling the float on which his sleigh had been placed.

So the club acquiesced and replaced Santa with a plastic Snow Queen dummy.

It’s things like this that sap some of the joy out of everyday life.

Our children will never know the joy and the thrill of scaring their parents by riding on the Witches Hat – a conical roundabout balanced on a pole – or the super-long metal slide at Roath Park, which had a bump in the middle and would send you airborne should you manage to go down fast enough.

My dad used to give my friends and I candles to drag behind us as we slid down.

Wax would be left behind and the bums that came after ours would polish the slide up a treat, allowing us to achieve super speeds.

And, when you flew off the end, you’d land in a patch of mud as there were no bouncy rubber safety surfaces back in the 1980s.

Some experts have even said that a lack of a normal element of risk during playtimes today can hold back children’s normal development.

But sometimes rules are put in place for a very good reason and cries of “health and safety gone mad” are unjustified.

After concerns were raised about people “acting suspiciously” near Milton Primary Academy in Stoke, teachers told parents that children in Year Six were no longer allowed to walk to school on their own.

The new rule states they must be dropped off and collected within the grounds.

They must be accompanied onto the school site by parents who, until now, were dropping them off in the car park on the other side of the road.

Cue outrage from parents claiming the decision is “over the top” and will add a whole 10 minutes to the school run. Audible gasp!

One parent said it wasn’t on because if you have to go to work you haven’t got a lot of time. And anyway, the lollipop lady outside the school can watch the kids as they walk in from the car park.

A mum said she felt a short walk alone to school was encourgaing her son to be independent and was preparing him for high school.

Maybe so, but if the choice is between him having to learn a little bit of self reliance later on or getting to school in absolute safety I know which one I’d pick. It’s a no-brainer.

Back in the halcyon days of the 1980s I was allowed to walk home for lunch from my local primary school, provided I was with a friend who was also going home for lunch and we didn’t use the really overgrown and spooky lane. I was nowhere near Year Six age but it was a different time. Perhaps the world is more dangerous now, perhaps parents are less naive or just less willing to take risks. Whatever the truth, I’m glad that at Luke’s school, parents walk their children in and teachers do not release the children from the class at the end of the day until they recognise mum, dad or another designated carer in the crowd. It’s common sense. I cannot understand the attitude of the parents in Stoke. It’s like they’re put out that they can no longer screech to a halt on the opposite side of the road to the school, rev the engine impatiently while the kids get out and then leave their safety completely in the hands of the poor lollipop lady while they head off down the road.

These people would certainly have something to say if, God forbid, something did happen to their children.