OFFICIALS have issued an appeal to fill three school crossing patrol roles, to ensure children's safety.

The vacancies are at Allenview Road/Hanham Road in Wimborne, Blandford Road in Corfe Mullen, and a new site at Wareham Road, Corfe Mullen, to serve pupils of Henbury View, Rushcombe, Lockyers Middle and Corfe Hills schools.

School travel adviser Siân Holbrook added: "We are lucky that the schools in the Wimborne area support and encourage their pupils to walk and cycle whenever possible.

"Henbury View First and Lockyers Middle schools both have active school travel plans in place and Rushcombe First School is currently in the process of developing its travel plan.

"It is vital for the children's safety that we recruit school crossing patrols for the three locations so that the high numbers of accompanied and unaccompanied pupils can continue to walk to school as safely as possible."

Efforts to fill the vacancies have so far failed to bear fruit.

Dorset County Council senior road safety officer Rob Camp said: "Recruitment can be difficult, but I am convinced there is always someone out there who would apply if they knew about the vacancy.

"I would also like to point out that the new Age Discrimination Act 2006, recently implemented by the county council, allows employees to work on until the age of 75.

"More importantly, we are now able to recruit up to this upper age limit and this has proved popular with semi-retired people looking to work limited hours.'' Anyone interested in applying should contact the network traffic safety team at Dorset County Council.