BY DJANGO, OSCAR, JUDE, HARRISON AND SEBASTIAN

Here is the full interview with Helen Hayes.

Mog Chronicle: How long did it take for this to happen?

Helen Hayes: It’s been a long time. I can’t remember exactly, but I think it’s been about three years ago that we met on that very rainy corner. I remember that.

Mog Chronicle: How important was it for all the children to stand up and be part of the campaign?

Helen Hayes: It was really important, and I think it was the thing that made the difference. The thing is that the council never has quite enough money to do everything that it wants to do.

So it has to decide what it’s going to focus on and what it’s going to actually spend money on. And when people, especially children, really get together and say: “You’ve got to do this,” it’s the most important thing. That really makes a difference to how they think about what’s important.

So I think it was the children that made it happen.

Mog Chronicle: Are you going to do this in any other school?

Helen Hayes: We are trying to think about all of the schools. I’ve got lots and lots of primary schools and I’ve got about seven secondary schools in my constituency. And we’re trying to think about them all the time, but each school is in a different place.

Some of them are on quiet roads already. Some of them are on streets where it’s quite easy to put in school streets so we just stop the cars from getting too close to the school during the school run in the morning and in the afternoon. But some of them are a bit trickier because they’re on really busy roads.

There’s another school – I can’t tell you where it is yet – but we’re working on getting another zebra costing outside of that school. I hope we’ll start to be able to talk about that in public very soon.

Mog Chronicle: When did you actually start to get the idea about how to make the road here safer?

Helen Hayes: The idea has been around for quite a long time. I think we’ve been working on it with the children and campaign specifically for a crossing for about three years.

But I would say for maybe about 10 years there has been concern about this road and the speed of traffic on this road. It has been getting busier and local residents and parents and everybody has been saying: “This is not as safe as it should be. What can we do about it?”

The idea for the crossing came from the children.

Mog Chronicle: What would you change if you were to do it again?

Helen Hayes: If we were to do it again, ideally, we would have done it quicker. It wasn’t as smooth and easy as we had hoped it might be and it took a little bit longer than we would have liked to get there.

But I think it’s been brilliant today, so I don’t think I’d have done anything different about the design of the crossing. I think it’s pretty perfect, but I think if we could have done it two years ago, that would have been even better.

Mog Chronicle: What is it like working for Prime Minister Andy Burnham?

Helen Hayes: Oh, it’s good working for Andy Burnham. It’s really good. He’s trying to do lots of great things for the country. He’s giving people a bit more hope, so it’s good.

Mog Chronicle: What do you do as an MP?

Helen Hayes: I do all sorts of different things as an MP. The big thing that you might see, which is the most visible bit, is I get to go to the House of Commons and sit on the green benches in the House Commons and I get to speak and vote on behalf of everybody who lives in this area, including you.

That’s a big part of my job, but in order to do that job as well as I can, I need to find out what people think in this area and what’s important to them. So I also spend quite a big part of my week talking to people locally in all sorts of different ways, including like this, trying to find out what’s important to people.

This is so that when I stand up in the House of Commons I know that I’m not just saying what I think, but I’m also saying what all of you think as well.