Communities Secretary announces new members of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation

RECOGNITION Express North West based in Southport is delighted to confirm that after months of uncertainty, now that Schools have returned, the hunt is on once again to find the UK's junior poster artists to design a road safety banner for November's BRAKE Road Safety Week, running over 16 November to 22 November 2020.

Promotional products, badges and School uniform specialist Recognition Express has renewed its sponsorship of road safety charity BRAKE for 2020 and has just launched its 12th annual Schools design a road safety banner competition. Each year, Primary School children, aged 4 to 11, are invited to create a design for a road safety banner based on that year's BRAKE Road Safety Week theme, which for 2020 is:- 'No Need to Speed.'

New for 2020 is the option to upload entries online, or send them in by email in addition to entering by post. For full details and to download the entry form visit:- ReSchools.Co.UK. The competition closes, on Sunday, 9 October 2020. 

Someone is injured on a UK road every four minutes and vehicle speed plays a part on every occasion. In a crash, 1 mph can mean the difference between life and death, but people still regularly break speed limits or travel too fast for the conditions of the road.

The winning children will each receive a personalised trophy along with a large scale printed banner featuring their design to display outside their School during Road Safety Week. Since the competition launched in 2008 Recognition Express has seen thousands of entries from across the UK, all demonstrating children's knowledge of the importance of road safety.

Said Steve Bibby:- "The Covid pandemic has turned everything on its head this year and School children are 1 of the groups most affected. Our design a road safety banner competition has become almost a fixture in the calendar of many local Schools and we have been hoping against hope that Schools would be allowed to go back for the autumn term and take part. Whilst our cash flow is tight as a result of the lockdown, we believe road safety is very important, and are committed to keeping people safe. Our relationship with BRAKE is long standing and we didn't want to let them down this year. Road Safety Week aims to inspire thousands of Schools, organisations and communities to take action and promote road safety awareness during the week and beyond and it is a privilege to be involved. Our competition is a fantastic opportunity to engage Primary School children and help establish good road safety sense for years to come. We are always impressed by the creativity and quality of the designs sent in each year. In 2019, we were thrilled that a winner was selected from St Patricks RC Primary School, in Southport. I hope that our competition will help restore a sense of normality for the children this term and look forward to seeing more 2020 entries than ever before."

POLICE in the North West have logged 1,742 online child sex offences in 2019/20, an increase of 60% in just 12 months. Data obtained by the NSPCC reveals 10,391 crimes were recorded by all 46 forces across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands for 2019/20. The offences across the UK increased by 16% from the previous year where data from Police forces is available and includes crimes that had a cyber element such as grooming, sexual assault and rape.  That takes the total number of recorded offences in the UK in the 5 years since it became mandatory to record whether a crime involved the internet to more than 37,000. In those same 5 years, forces across the North West logged an increase of 152% from 690 in 2015/16 to 1,742 in 2019/20. However, this figure is likely to significantly understate the true extent of the problem due to potential under-recording by Police forces of the role of the internet and variation in the way forces log these crimes.

While the Freedom of Information data does not include the lockdown period, risks to children online increased and Childline counselling sessions on grooming went up. The charity says this highlights the urgent need for the Government to push forward with the Online Harms Bill, which would place a legal Duty of Care on tech firms to protect children, enforced by an independent regulator. The NSPCC is calling on the Government to publish its final plans before the end of the year, and get an Online Harms Bill on the statute book by the end of 2021.

Andy Burrows, NSPCC Head of Child Safety Online Policy, said:- "These figures suggest that online abuse was already rising before lockdown, and the risks to children appear to have spiked significantly since. It is now almost 17 months since the Government's original proposals for social media regulation were published and children continue to face preventable harm online. At the Hidden Harms Summit, the Prime Minister signalled he was determined to act. That's why he needs to prioritise making progress on a comprehensive Online Harms Bill this Autumn, and pass legislation by the end of 2021, that sees tech firms held criminally and financially accountable if they put children at risk."

Olivia's daughter Emma was groomed and sexually exploited through an online game called:- 'Movie Star Planet,' from when she was 6 years old. The abuser gained her trust then threatened her into sending him and other adults sexually explicit images and committing sexual acts for 2 years. He would threaten to expose her if she didn't do as she was told, that he would even put her in a "shallow grave" or kill us, her parents. As she got older, she is now 14, she began to struggle. Her behaviour changed, she became angry, depressed and would cry without really knowing why. She found it incredibly hard to make herself go into School and would ring me in tears, not knowing why she couldn't go through the door. "It was horrible, I felt so helpless when she talked about self harming and not wanting to go on living."

The NSPCC has been campaigning for a Duty of Care on tech firms since the launch of its Wild West Web campaign back in 2018. The Government published the Online Harms White Paper, in April 2019, but are still yet to produce the final consultation response. The charity previously published a set of set of regulatory proposals setting out how social media regulation should work, called Taming the Wild West Web. At the end of the month, they will set out further proposals explaining what powers the independent regulator needs in order to protect children online.  Adults concerned about a child online can contact the NSPCC Helpline confidentially for advice and support on:- 08088005000 or email:- Help@NSPCC.Org.UK.