A school in Stoke-on-Trent is believed to be the first in the country to introduce parking charges for parents.
St Gregory’s Catholic Academy is building a 50-space car park to cope with traffic congestion, as parents park on double-yellow lines at drop-off and collection times.
The school says the car park will need a warden, and that the parents must bear the cost through a termly parking permit.
One parent, Ruth Quigley, who parks some distance away and walks her child to school, told the Stoke Sentinel the situation in Spring Garden Road had become dangerous.
“The scariest part of it is Spring Garden Road, not crossing the A50. It is like putting your child in God’s hands walking down that road.”
Margaret Yates, the deputy principal, said the school could not spend money intended for education on solving the problem. “As the head, and also a parent, I fully understand the difficulty in parking around the school, but the safety of the children has to be put first, above everything else,” she said.
“We have a budget for the education of our children and of course safeguarding comes into that. But we cannot spend that money on a car park, which is why we must look elsewhere to cover the costs.”
Although many parents – and local residents – agree that the parking situation had become chaotic, others have protested that the proposed charge is unfair, and the school should cover the cost of the car park to ensure the safety of pupils.
Michael Underwood, who has two children in the school, told the Sentinel: “The traffic is a concern but I’ve never heard of anybody being charged money just to drop children at the school gates – it’s like a parent tax.”
St Gregory’s, which, like thousands of other schools across the country, regularly gets complaints when local residents are boxed in by cars parked across their drives, created a temporary car park during roadworks in the area, which worked so well they decided to build a permanent one.
