They are among the most inexpensive council employees, but arguably some of the most important – the school crossing patrol people who work for just a handful of hours every week stopping the traffic to help children cross the roads outside their schools.
But Bristol faces being a city where lollipop ladies, and men, are a thing of the past, thanks to a single sentence in a huge document listing proposals for the city’s public services budget for the next year.
And out on the streets of Bristol, among the parents walking their children to school, there has been shock and anger at the proposal, put forward by the Green Party-led council committee, and also a great deal of bewilderment.
On a cold afternoon in early January, at St Anne’s Infants School, the wide crossroads are the heart of the community – with the primary school on one corner and the parish church on the other. The high-vis orange and yellow coats are immediately noticeable for drivers approaching the crossroads from all four directions, as children wait patiently to cross after they stream out of the school gates.
Parent Barbara hadn’t heard the news, broken by Bristol Live last week, that Bristol City Council was planning on ending the funding for all school patrol people. “I didn’t know this was going to happen, what a terrible loss,” she said. “They are absolutely brilliant with the kids – and we really value having them on the roads at busy times.”
The road is one of three into the part of St Anne’s on the other side of the railway line, and is a busy one. “When is this going to happen?” asked an incredulous parent, Bianca. “We really appreciate them being here because this is such a busy crossing especially in the morning.”
And another parent, Jo, warned there could be consequences. “I think that is a great shame,” she said. “It will put children’s lives at risk. We use this crossing every day, at busy times of the day,” she added.
It is a similar scene across Bristol, but the cuts to the city’s lollipop ladies and men are little more than a footnote in this year’s budget, with other cuts to other headline-grabbing services, like libraries and museums, the axing of the council tax benefits and the mass sell-off of more than 1,000 council houses, the school crossing patrol cuts might appear to have been overlooked.
Bristol has been here before, of course. Back in 2017, the first big political battle for recently-elected Mayor Marvin Rees was his budget. After ‘discovering’ what he said was a £30m hole in the budget left by his predecessor George Ferguson, cuts were proposed – and the closure of pretty much all of Bristol’s public toilets was the most drastic and visible cut, but lollipop people came a close second.
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Back then, the original plan was to save £155,000 a year by axing 43 school crossing patrols. In the end, after a campaign that saw children at a number of schools protest, the cuts were scaled back a bit, and the council agreed to keep the school crossing patrols in locations where there wasn’t a traffic light or zebra crossing already there.
That meant, by the end of 2017, a total of 24 school crossing patrols at 21 schools were cut, which saved the council around £90,000 a year. In the same budget, critics noted, the Mayor included spending around £90,000 a year hiring a marketing firm to produce reports on how the council and the mayor were talked about on social media.
The 2017 cuts left 56 school crossing patrol people employed at 52 schools in total. That number has changed a bit in the six years since – other road schemes have filled the need for school crossing patrols, a number of schools have closed, some schools that had their patrols cut back then carried on paying the wages out of their own budgets.
Children protest against the cutting of their lollipop man at Hillcrest Primary School on the A37 Wells Road, in July 2017
Now, at the start of 2025, the council is going for the lollipop ladies once again. The proposal in the council’s budget documents is to ‘remove funding for school crossing patrols’, and for officers to then ‘consult with schools on alternative safety and funding measures’.
That might mean encouraging school bosses to find the money themselves, it could mean installing a pedestrian crossing instead of having a real person in their hi-vis with their lollipop.
As in 2017, the money saved to the council for all this is a drop in the ocean. The council bosses predict cutting the funding will save £114,000 in the next 12 months from April, and then around £200,000 in the following year.
For context, Bristol City Council’s leaders are looking to find ways to plug a £52 million funding gap – the difference between the amount the council gets in and the amount it is going to have to spend in the coming year, as the cost of adult social care – looking after the city’s elderly and infirm – continues to spiral. The city’s lollipop ladies and men would make a 0.4 per cent dent in that budget crisis.
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The difference, of course, is that the council has a legal duty to fund adult and children’s social care services, but lollipop ladies, like public toilets, libraries or museums, are not a statutory service a council has to have.
On the streets of Southville and Ashton Gate, the area which elected Cllr Tony Dyer, the Green Party’s council leader, back in May, there was concern too, but bafflement as well.
Outside Ashton Gate Primary School on North Street, one mum, who declined to be named, said: “I can’t understand this at all, it’s such a small amount in the greater scheme of things. The council and the Greens are spending a relative fortune on things like the Liveable Neighbourhood and better cycle paths and so on – the stuff we voted them in to do – to make it easier and safer for people to leave their cars behind and walk and cycle.
“And yet here’s a thing already in place which supports that. There’ll be parents of older kids less likely to let their kids walk to school on their own all over the city, if this happens. So what they’ll do is drive them. It just seems like it should be the last thing the Greens do,” she added.
Mum Kerry Edwards and other parents lead a petition to get the lollipop lady reinstated at Oasis Academy New Oak in Hengrove in 2018
(Image: James Beck/Freelance)
There’s now a lull before the storm as committees of councillors meet to talk through the proposals, and there’s still a chance the lollipop people could be spared the cuts. Careful not to rock that boat, school bosses Bristol Live have spoken to are cautious not to go public just yet on their opposition to the plan, and the school crossing patrol officers themselves, who have each been sent an HR letter warning them their position is at risk, are also worried about speaking out while there remains a chance of a reprieve.
Bristol Labour group leader, Cllr Tom Renhard, also expressed his concern over the Green Party’s plans to scrap school crossing patrols. “One serious injury on Bristol’s roads is one too many,” he said. “We are deeply concerned that Green Party plans to scrap school crossing patrols will put children in harm’s way.”