LOCAL authorities have been urged to ensure all school buses are fitted with seatbelts by an expert in treating accident victims.

Ken Chew, accident and emergency consultant at Middlesbrough General Hospital, is backing The Northern Echo's campaign to tighten a legal loophole on school transport.

The campaign was launched after a survey revealed that thousands of youngsters in the North-East and North Yorkshire travel to school on vehicles without belts.

Mr Chew said: "If children are wearing seatbelts, they are less likely to be thrown forward and injure themselves during impact.

"Because a child has a small body, they can be thrown with quite a force and sustain quite severe injuries."

He said that if a bus rolled over and the children were not held in by seatbelts, they suffered serious injuries by being thrown around the vehicle.

Some local authorities ensure that buses doing the school run have belts by making it a condition of their contracts.

But others, including Darlington, Durham and Hartlepool, do not use their power to insist vehicles have belts fitted. In North Yorkshire, most buses carrying primary age children have belts but some do not.

The Echo reported on Saturday how parents of children at Great Smeaton Primary are launching their own letter writing campaign to get seatbelts fitted.

A spokesman for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions said legislation coming in next year required all new buses, coaches and minibuses to be fitted with belts, except where they are for mainly urban use.

But this would not apply to vehicles already on the road.

The spokesman said: "It is up to local authorities to ensure that they only contract to vehicles that have seatbelts and we hope that many will.

"If people want their local services to have seatbelts for children they should make sure their local councils know that.