Child safety seats on coaches?

[GreebosWhiskers]

I have a wee question & am posting it in chat ('cos the chat board's usually busy) & here in the legal section.

Our toddler group has just booked a 70 seat coach for our summer trip. At the time of booking no mention was made regarding child safety seats but as the subject was brought up during committee meeting we thought we should check. During the call to the coach company we were told that all children under 3 will have to travel in a car seat or booster seat as this is the law. This will make things very difficult as some of our parents do not own cars so have no seats & some have seats that are permanently fixed into their cars. Also I was under the impression that car seats are designed to be used with a lap & shoulder belt rather than the lap belt fitted to most coaches so fitting these seats into the coach would make them unsafe & that a child under 3 is far too small to use just a booster seat with a lap belt.

I know ideally children should travel in a proper car seat & on the odd occasion my DCs are in a car they do but surely a coach is different? Especially since I'm not sure the seat belts will be compatible for proper fitting of the seats? (never mind the faff of fitting 40 seats in the coach & loading up the buggies & stuff - we'll be lucky to actually get anywhere).

Does anyone know what the law actually is?

As far as I know, the law doesn't apply to coaches. All the nurseries/toddler groups round here book coaches and the children just use the lap belts, no car seats or booster seats at all. Not an ideal situation but like you say most car seats would not be compatible with coach seats/belts anyway.

Hope this is some help.
here
Booster seat can not be used with just a lap beat anyway,it has to be a full seat belt.

Thanks folks - think I'll get the person who booked the coach to call them again.

It's not so much the getting of the seats (folks can always borrow them if need be) but more the fitting & even getting them to the pick-up point. We don't have a car but do have seats as the dc's sometimes travel in my parents' car - the seats are huge muckle things & there's no way I can walk or get the bus to the pick-up point with dd3, ds in his buggy & lugging 2 car seats. I'll just have to try to talk someone with a car into taking them for me.

tbh if the sodding coach company had told us when we booked that we'd need the car seats we'd have done something else instead. When we called & queried it the woman said she didn't tell is 'cos she hadn't known we were taking under 3's - we booked the coach as XXXX toddlers group