Parking Petition Success

After securing over the required 500 signatures on a recent petition to make the roads and streets around our school safer, Mr Cash and Claire Knowles (parent) attended the full Trafford Council meeting on 20th March 2024 to present the petition to the full council. A HUGE thank you to Claire for her hard work and to Dylan and Thomas in Year 4 for representing, our exceptional learners. Below is a copy of the speech.

Good evening to you all.

My name is Claire Knowles and I live in Oldfield Brow in Altrincham. You may be aware that I have recently been working on a petition (with help from local councillor Shengke and help from Bridget Green) for which we collected 536 votes. This petition has been designed to raise awareness to keep the roads around the perimeters of Oldfield Brow Primary School on Taylor Road SAFE. An incident, or what i’d prefer to call a ‘near miss’ occurred last September, which prompted me to join forces with our amazing community and ask our local council for help in putting our children’s safety first. A car, that we believed to be stationary, suddenly reversed up Stokoe Avenue, narrowly missing my six year old daughter by a few inches as she took one step off the kerb. This was the corner of Stokoe Avenue that meets Taylor Road. Our children are in dire need of a zebra crossing here. This corner is very busy at school times and is now proving dangerous, it doesn’t help matters when cars continue to park on double yellow lines. After speaking with other parents outside our school, my daughter Harper sadly isn’t the only child to be involved in a near miss. It has been reported that a child was hit by a van on this very corner, fortunately the child did not suffer serious injuries but I’m sure you will all agree that we cannot allow these incidents to happen again.

My name is James Cash and I am the Headteacher of Oldfield Brow Primary School. Unfortunately, the incident that Claire describes is not isolated and, as a school, we receive almost daily reports of ‘near misses’ involving our pupils. The causes of these incidents vary wildly from parking that obstructs the views of other road users to very dangerous parking. During our recent Parent/Carer survey (March 2024), parking and road safety came out as the single biggest concern that parents/carers have relating to the school. Despite numerous attempts to physically police the area with school staff and also remind road users of their duties within the law, these incidents do not decrease and instead follow a predictable pattern of slight, surface-level improvements for a matter of days and then a return to the same patterns of dangerous parking and driving that is putting the lives of our children and the wider community at risk. It is the school’s firm belief that stronger measures are needed to enforce parking and driving restrictions in order to keep our children safe.

Parents and carers have voiced their concerns.

Children have voiced their concerns.

The elderly have voiced their concerns and our school have voiced their concerns - our whole community is asking our council to help.

When preparing for this speech, we gathered the voices of our school’s most important asset, our exceptional learners. I would like to share with you their voice on the issue of parking. Dylan in Year 4 stated that “I do not feel safe when travelling to school because of the dangerous parking and driving at the beginning and end of the school day. I feel that the area around the school should be just for children to walk safely. I am going into Year 5 soon and would like to begin to walk to school on my own sometimes at the end of next school year, but I don’t feel safe enough to do this at the moment” When I asked him what he would like the council to do, he said “make it safer by stopping cars parking and driving dangerously. Adults need to be told if they are not doing the right thing just like children. I also think that we should lower the speed limit around the school too”.

Thomas in Year 4 also said that he wanted to see “change”. “Walking to and from school is NOT safe. Me and my friends have nearly been hit by cars a lot of times. I think that having safe spaces to cross the road will help me and my friends to feel safer”

As mentioned previously, our school’s office email is updated regularly with reports of illegal parking, dangerous driving and near misses. Prior to me starting at the school, there was an unfortunate incident in which a child was hit by a van at the end of the day close to Stokoe Avenue meaning that there is at least one example of a near miss becoming a reality. Despite engagement with the police and living streets, very little progress has been made and parking and driving violations continue to plague our local area.

As the Headteacher of Oldfield Brow, the safety and happiness of every member of our school is my paramount concern. My school community are telling me that they do not feel safe on their commute to and from the school on a daily basis. This is unacceptable and I, along with my parent community, are seeking the help of the council to ensure that this most basic right is safeguarded for all involved.

We desperately need zebra crossings or school crossing patrols for Stokoe Avenue and Taylor Road, children cannot cross here safely. Taylor Road is a long stretch of road. Vehicles speed up and down this road on a daily basis. It’s dangerous. Oldfield Brow is home to a lot of children and elderly people. I don’t believe speed limit signs will be enough to combat this problem. I do think speed bumps are essential here, I think they are the only guaranteed solution to slow the traffic down.

More signs are needed for our school and additional clear road markings. We currently have only TWO signs stating there is a nearby school.

We would benefit from ‘slow’ road markings to remind drivers of children crossing.

Children playing on the Crescent on Taylor Road are subjected to car fumes from the usual parked cars with engines running.

‘Engines off’ signs would be very useful here. I believe a zebra crossing or school crossing patrol would be beneficial on Taylor Road near the Crescent (where many children play on their way home from school). The road gets heavily congested with traffic. On many occasions the traffic is at a standstill due to drivers not giving way. We simply cannot cross the road safely. The ‘School Route Audit Report’ conducted by Living Streets (the charity for Everyday Walking) dated February 2023 highlights all of the points raised in this petition. These are long standing issues. A minimum of 536 people agree that the roads around our school are unsafe. I speak on behalf of those 536 people today and the children of the Oldfield Brow primary school and kindly ask that you step in and help us. Please listen to our children, parents and the elderly - OUR COMMUNITY. THANK YOU