Meeting with Brighton & Hove Council - 4th July 2025

On Fri 4th July Gregor & Natalie finally had their meeting with B&H council, which led on from their speeches to council in December 2024. This was attended by a number of key people including the Cabinet member for Children, Families and Youth services (Emma Daniel), Senior Education Adviser (Ashley Seymour-Williams) and the director of Public Health (Caroline Vass). 

During the meeting we asked B&H council to support all schools (primary & secondary) in banning all smartphones, internet enabled devices and any device with photography or video recording capabilities.The council were presented with a wide range of evidence focusing on the serious safeguarding risks that these devices expose children to. The reason for focusing on this area is that the council has already made clear to us that it does not set school policies, their governing body does however, the council does retain a legal statutory duty of care to safeguard children, and so we thought this would be the best approach.

The council shared feedback on a recent schools workshop on smartphones. They are impressed with some of the strong policies being enacted, especially in cases such as Cottesmore school who are banning smartphones from coming in to school from September 2025. The council also heard from other heads who are keen to act but feel nervous to do so, without council support.

The council then went on to announce that they will be drafting a letter to show their support for smartphone free schools very soon, possibly before the end of term. We asked if we could see a draft of the communication before it is finalised but they declined this reassuring us that their officers would take note of all the evidence we shared and that they have received from schools. 

In summary, all of the hard work we have been doing over the past year or so is really paying off and we will soon have an official position from the council supporting the idea of smartphone free school. We hope this will empower many more schools to ban smartphones from schools to safeguard all children and prolong their play-based childhood, free from the risks and distraction of the internet in their pocket. We also hope it will help to persuade more parents to consider delaying giving their child a smartphone until they are much older.

This is a huge achievement and we are very grateful to all parents, teachers, councillors, police, healthcare professionals and anyone else who has contributed to spreading the word on this very important issue.