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Newspaper launches ‘family friendly’ campaign

A weekly newspaper has launched a campaign to urge its local council to improve facilities for families with young children in Canterbury.

The Kentish Gazette launched ‘Make it Family Friendly’ after readers and mum complained that Canterbury was falling short of providing modern facilities for families with young children.

In launching its campaign on Friday, the paper said it wants the city to succeed in the modern age.

It had previously featured stories in the paper about young mums having to use insufficient facilities in the city’s shops with mothers saying there was a lack of baby feeding facilities.

The campaign calls on Canterbury City Council and Canterbury city Partnership bosses to meet with mums and listen to their views. It also demands that businesses in the city provide clean, well-equipped breast feeding facilities.

In an article launching the campaign editor Leo Whitlock said the paper was calling on the council, partnership and the shops, restaurants and cafes it represents to work with mums to make shopping in the city a pleasurable and stress-free experience.

It also aims to prevent families from going to places with better facilities outside of Canterbury to shop.

Said Leo: “Shops here are competing with centres like Bluewater, less than an hour up the M2, where the facilities are out of this world.

“There are lots of them and they are designed with the mums of small babies in mind.”

The Gazette reports that that the council’s public toilets are not convenient for mums with babies and the council car parks do not offer parent-and-baby parking spaces.

Added Leo: “The powers-that-be need to walk around the city with a new mum and see the world through their eyes.”