A regional daily’s campaign to prevent paid lollipop men and women being axed has been hailed a success after a U-turn by the council who made the proposals.

The Peterborough Evening Telegraph launched a city-wide campaign and petition against the city council’s budget proposals to get rid of the service and replace paid employees with volunteers.

The Lollipops Cutbacks Campaign was backed by councillors, schools and parents and achieved its aim within a matter of weeks.

The plans would have saved £43,000 a year out of the council’s budget of £370m by removing the 11 school crossing guards.

Campaign success for the Peterborough Evening Telegraph

A motion to axe the proposal was unanimously agreed at a group meeting of ruling Conservative councillors.

Editor Mark Edwards told HTFP during the campaign that the paper acted as the voice for the people of Peterborough and this week said the decision seemed like a ‘no brainer’.

Speaking about the newspaper’s success in stopping the proposals, he said:  “We expected it to be a success, it appeared to be a pretty straight forward decision.

“To be fair to the council they considered it fairly quickly.”

Mark said that public opinion had soon gathered pace during the campaign with protests outside schools and support from politicians.

He added: “We are pleased that it has been a success and our readers are delighted because it gathered a lot of support very quickly. Most of the readers were slightly exasperated with the city council. But they realised they had made the wrong call on this one.”

The council has now been left with an over-spend and will need to come up with ways to save the money.