Leader - Our children need to learn about danger

How many times do you hear of ridiculous decisions made in the name of health and safety on the grounds of What If?

What if somebody trips? What if a child is hurt?

If you were asked to come up with a list of potentially dangerous places for children to visit, allotments would probably not come very high up.

In Wem, children from a nursery were regularly taken to the allotments in Love Lane, which are run by Wem Town Council, to grow their own stuff and learn something about where food comes from.

Now the town council has sat in judgment on these visits and concluded that they are "inappropriate" and the reasons given include the health and safety implications of allowing small children on a site with open water troughs, canes, uneven surfaces, and possible access to chemicals.

In other words, apart from the chemicals, which should be locked away anyway, the alleged hazards are the sort of everyday things that children are going to come across in their lives, unless they are wrapped up in cotton wool and become an indoor generation whose only outlook on reality is through the distorted prism of computer games and television.

How will they ever learn about life if they are to be prevented from learning about life?

Health and safety is often used to disguise the real reason, which is the fear of getting the blame if things go wrong, a quite understandable fear in our increasingly litigious society with an expanding compensation culture.

And while the council may genuinely feel that it is acting in the best interests of children, it should ask itself whether stopping children enjoying these useful and educational visits really is in their best interests as they find their feet in a world in which one day they will have to make their own assessments of danger.