GOVERNMENT cash will be used in a bid to cut down the number of children hurt in road accidents in Kirklees.

The news comes as Deighton, Thornhill and Dewsbury West wards were today named the most dangerous places to live and play for children in the district, and among the worst in West Yorkshire.

Now a £90,000 grant over three years from the Department of Transport is set to be used to target the blackspots.

New figures from the West Yorkshire Casualty Reduction Partnership, which works on road safety issues with councils and the police, highlight the council wards with the highest number of road casualties.

In Deighton, 51 children were injured out of 543 casualties between 2000 and 2002 (9%); in Dewsbury West, there were 53 out of a total of 297 (18%); and in Thornhill there were 45 out of a total of 198 (23%).

Across West Yorkshire as a whole 5,316 out of a total 39,380 casualties involved were children (14%).

David Warburton, senior road safety officer for Kirklees Road Safety Unit, said Britain had one of the worst child accident records in Europe.

He said the Government cash had been secured for a pilot project working in the Deighton, Thornhill and Dewsbury West areas.

It will involve working with children from infant schools in the wards and building on their basic road safety skills.

"We will be taking children on to the street between 10 and 15 times over a year and teaching them to find safe places to cross, how to deal with crossing near parked cars and crossing at road junctions," he said. "You wouldn't teach a child to swim in the classroom, so we need to be out on busy roads for the programme to work."

Schools would recruit parent volunteers as part of the project.

Mr Warburton said many parents drove their children to school and it wasn't until they were maybe 11 and at high school, they had their first experience of dealing with traffic and roads.