Pupils campaign for safer parking outside Copdock Primary School in Ipswich

Children at Copdock Primary School have been campaigning for their parents to park more considerately outside their school. Teacher Heidi Cross with the school council. (Image: Archant)

Members of the school council, aged between five and 11, at Copdock Primary School have been campaigning for parents to improve their parking for three years.

During this time the school has sent letters to parents, conducted walking buses, approached Copdock and Washbrook Parish Council and also contacted Denise Ford, PCSO of Babergh East safer neighbourhood team, who supported pupils by ticketing cars with advisory notices.

With the problem not going away, the pupils decided to take matters into their own hands and patrol the area outside school in high-visibility jackets, putting tickets on dangerously parked cars with their own specially-made notices.

School council member Holly Friston, 11, said: “We came up with a few ideas and some parents didn’t take it seriously. It made us quite angry because some of the parents laughed at us when we were giving them tickets.”

She said drivers often disregarded the rules and parked on the double yellow and zig-zag lines.

Heidi Cross, link support teacher for the school council, said: “It’s having an impact not only on the children and what they are trying to achieve but on parents and users of the roads.

“We need parents to be role models and good examples to the children.”

Miss Cross said they were now making a final plea for parents to listen before a child gets seriously hurt.

The Ipswich Star launched the Park Smart campaign in October this year after two accidents outside Ipswich primary schools.

The campaign aims to raise awareness of the dangers posed by cars parked inconsiderately, and sometimes illegally, in the roads surrounding our primary schools.