Seat belts in school vans

On getting a call from my three-year-old son's van driver about where the pick up and drop off will be, I enquired whether he had seat belts on his van, to which he replied he does not.

I decided to check the regulations on this and so I called the Public Transport Authority. The lady on the phone asked me to call next week as she was not sure and was going to check! I told her I need to know now as children are starting school next week! Next, I phoned the person in charge of transport at my son's school. He advised me that the old school vans do not have seat belts and are therefore allowed to do without.

He tried to reassure me that a supervisor would be on the van. I asked him whether he thought the supervisor was able to hold 20 children back if somebody crashed into them. He also told me that as the children are so young even if the van did have seat belts somebody would have to put them on and that was impossible!

You can imagine how surprised I was as this is a service where parents pay double for the supervision of their children. In the end I called the police station to find out if there is a law and sure enough they told me that all new vans have to have children in seat belts but the old vans which do not have seat belts can go without!

Can anyone tell me if there is a period for the vans to be replaced or are we going to have to wait till the vans are too old to work anymore before they introduce new vans with seat belts?

Meanwhile, are we willing to risk our children's lives?