School closures - Tuesday 12 December 2017

Colin Diamond, Corporate Director for Children and Young People at Birmingham City Council, said:

“Following extensive consultation with headteachers, city council colleagues and highways engineers, we have taken the decision to allow individual council run schools, nursery schools, day nurseries, children’s centres and other early years settings to make individual decisions on whether to open or not tomorrow.

“The key roads around the city are now cleared and the position on side roads is varying. Given some may be now much better thanks to the efforts of the city’s excellent gritting teams, it was not considered appropriate to repeat yesterday’s blanket closure, when conditions were much worse.

“The safety of our children and young people continues to be of paramount importance and I would ask those running the schools and other settings to make a full assessment of their local conditions before making a final individual decision.

“For those in receipt of a school transport service, providers of those services will make a case-by-case decision on whether to operate on safety grounds too – so this may mean that although a pupil’s school is open, their transport is not provided. We apologise in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.

“Parents and carers should check their school websites, social media feeds and listen out to local radio for updates on if they are open tomorrow.”