Employers should take some responsibility for ensuring shift workers get home safely - two Crewe councillors have said.

Councillors Laura Smith (Crewe South) and Sally Handley (Crewe St Barnabas), have put forward a motion to next week's meeting of the full council calling for safe night time travel for workers.

As well as asking for the licensing committee to take the matter into account, the two Labour councillors are also urging the council to call for the lowering of fares and to oppose any cuts to public transport funding.

Cllr Sally Handley, Crewe St Barnabas, Labour (Cheshire East Council).

In a statement due to go to next week's meeting, Cllr Smith states: "Shift work is widespread in many industries, particularly hospitality, as well as health and care workers, retail , cleaning, security and porter staff and can often entail late-night working.

"Many workers, especially women, are increasingly worried about their safety travelling to and from work at night.

"While employers may feel their duty of care to staff ends when an employee finishes a shift, they also need to take into consideration journeys home, especially during unsocial hours."

The Crewe councillors are calling on the council to look at a number of ways for ensuring safe night time travel for workers.

These include, using its powers – as they say others have done – 'to allow our licensing board to include additional criteria when considering late opening applications from licensed premises.'

Cllr Laura Smith, Crewe South, Labour (Cheshire East Council).

They said this should be 'dependent on venues providing free transport home for night shift employees.'

This they believe, will significantly benefit the safety and wellbeing of hospitality workers, particularly women, who often cannot afford, or access, safe transport options late at night and benefit our community.

The Crewe councillors also urge Cheshire East to publicly call for improvement to late-night and off-peak transport service provision.

They want the council to use the Government's Safety of Women at Night Fund to provide extra night services - as well as work with employers to use the fund for supplementary taxi travel.

Cllr Smith and Cllr Handley would like to see public transport fares lowered.

Cllr Smith and Cllr Handley would like to see public transport fares lowered helping women travel home safely (Ryan Parker).

They also want the council to call for 'the municipal ownership of buses in order to lower prices and improve service provision, especially for night-time and off-peak services and endeavour to work with Greater Manchester Combined Authority as they move forward with bus franchising using powers under the Bus services Act 2017'.

The motion is on the agenda for Wednesday's (October 19) meeting of the council which takes place at Tatton Park at 11am.

READ MORE: Crewe: Carve a Halloween pumpkin and you could win a hamper full of Co-op goodies.

Free from clickbait, pop-up ads and unwanted surveys, Crewe Nub News is a quality online newspaper for our town.

Subscribe to our FREE weekly newsletter email HERE - just click the 'SIGN UP' button.

Please consider following Crewe Nub News on Facebook or Twitter.