TOO many children are dying on Lancashire’s roads – and more needs to be done to tackle the problem.

That is the verdict of a new report, which reveals the number of youngsters being killed or seriously injured is “significantly higher” than similar areas, while progress at reducing the toll is “significantly lower”.

And it criticised Lancashire County Council bosses for spending less than other areas on education and publicity for road safety.

The study comes from a committee of county councillors set up to look at the safety of under-19s in cars, or bicycles and walking in the street.

They were responding to government inspectors who last year found that “despite a range of strategies across the county, the numbers of child-ren who are seriously injured or killed on the roads has not fallen sufficiently.”

County Hall has now ident-ified “the high number of children and young people seriously injured or killed on the roads” as an “important weakness”.

In 2007 four children were killed and 115 seriously injured on the streets of Lancashire, which was higher than comp-arable local authorities like Essex and Hampshire.

The other areas were also making better progress reduc-ing their casualty rates.

The committee said Lanca-shire was on course to hit a target of a 50 per cent cut by 2010 – but its current record puts it 113th out 155 councils.

It is thought the disparity is closely connected to poverty – child pedestrians in the most deprived wards were found to be four times as likely to be injured as those in the least deprived.

Blackburn with Darwen Council, which is responsible for its own highways, saw more casualties than Lancashire but was improving much faster, the report said.

But a county-wide survey of schoolchildren found most children and young people felt safe crossing roads on the way to school.

Former council chairman Alan Whittaker, who sat on the committee when it met earlier this year, said: “The county council is doing all it can in terms of road safety.

"It is very proud of its record, but accidents happen and they are just that.

“You could get a reduction without doing anything. But you can never do enough – one accident is too many.”