Parents fear that ‘a price is being put on children’s road safety’ after schemes to make areas outside schools less dangerous came to an end. ‘School Streets’ - which close roads around schools at drop-off and pick-up times - were trialled at eight Stockport primaries in a bid to encourage families to leave the car at home and walk or cycle instead.
They took place between mid-June and late July this year with parents and children reportedly ‘appreciating a low traffic environment and the opportunity to enjoy their surroundings’. Schools also said how much their pupils had enjoyed the initiative. The trials were funded by Transport for Greater Manchester to the tune of £74,000 and expected to be self-sustaining after the initial start-up costs.
But only two schools - Cheadle and St Mary’s in Reddish - have continued the initiative into the autumn term, mainly due to the ‘onerous’ demands of staffing road closures twice a day. Paul Stoddard, whose son goes to St Matthew’s, in Edgeley, said he feared the end of the schemes could have serious consequences.
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“Both trials were incredibly successful in addressing road safety concerns that exist in the area such as speeding vehicles and nuisance parking,” he said. “Is there a price being put on the road safety of our children in Edgeley?”
Mr Stoddard, who helped to run the scheme at St Matthew’s, says concerned parents are questioning why the trials took place if they were going to be discontinued, despite yielding positive results. “Because now there are no road closures, kids are afraid to cross the road and my eight-year-old, who suffers from anxiety used to look forward to going to school - now he’s petrified. We are here to look after the kids, are we not?”
A report to a council scrutiny committee asks members to ‘note the significant barriers to being able to do School Streets long term and acknowledge the lack of resource, financial and human, for all options’.
But Edgely councillor Matt Wynne, told the meeting that the paper was unduly ‘negative’. “It highlights all the problems we were already well aware of and offers very little solution, implying road safety is best addressed by being delegated to parents, schools, ward councillors and even children themselves,” he said.
“If we want physical solutions to road safety outside schools permanently this now appears a luxury reserved for primary schools in leafier areas of the borough that possess higher levels of social capital, where schools have larger budgets, staff have less demands placed on them and parents have more free time to help.”
Coun Grace Baynham, cabinet member for highways, insisted that the council did support the School Streets and had not pulled any funding for the initiative - on the contrary it successfully applied for more. She also noted that the traffic regulation orders that form part of the scheme are to remain in place until at least the end of 2023.
“This means that, at any time they want to, the schools involved can continue to run School Streets,” she said. “They will require staff, parents and volunteers to run the scheme, which was always due to be the case.
“When the schemes were set up they were always meant to be self-sustaining after the initial set-up and the Greater Manchester authority has never offered any ongoing revenue funding for these schemes.” However she said some ‘good learning points’ had arisen from the trials and there were plans to ‘identify a school to create a best practice model for road safety’.
“If we can get this model to work we can roll out the improvements to schools across the borough, thereby maximising the number of school which we can help,” she told the meeting. Stockport council met at the town hall on Thursday night (November 17).
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