Roads past Derbyshire schools could be closed off to traffic in pilot scheme
Roads past Derbyshire schools could be closed off to traffic during pickup and dropoff but cameras cannot be put in place to monitor compliance. Derbyshire schools are being encouraged to take part in pilots where vehicles would be temporarily blocked from driving past schools during pick-up and drop-off.
This follows pilot one-day closures outside four Derbyshire schools on National Clean Air Day on June 20, involving William Gilbert Primary School in Duffield, Riddings Infant and Nursery School, Riddings Junior School and St John’s Primary School and Nursery in Belper. These schools are already ahead of the curve in terms of sustainable travel, a meeting was told, with higher proportions of pupils already walking, cycling or scooting to school, than those who are dropped off in vehicles by their parents or carers.
A Derbyshire County Council meeting this week (September 25) was told that future pilots could be for one standalone day, one day per week or for the whole month of November – no car November. The pilot days and future pilots would be marshalled road closures applied for through the local borough or district council while permanent plans would require laborious and costly traffic management orders (TROs).
READ MORE:Graham Norton recalls 'darkest moment' when he was stabbed and left for dead
READ MORE:We're all paying full council tax. Why are we only getting half the services?
Not all schools have viable routes which could be closed off during pickup and dropoff due to their position on a housing estate requiring consistent through traffic. The meeting was told that Derby City Council runs a “school safe haven” scheme which sees vehicles banned on roads past a number of schools, all monitored by CCTV cameras.
Councillors were told that Derby school safe haven sites frequently had 97 per cent compliance with the restrictions due to the cameras. Rob Bound, from the county council’s sustainable travel team, said the city authority often rented out its cameras to other councils and then brought them back to Derby if compliance started to dip.
He said Derbyshire could not use CCTV camera enforcement because it does not have the legal powers to do so. Gaining these powers would require Derbyshire to review the “thousands” of traffic orders it currently holds before it can go to central Government to request new ones.
Meanwhile, choosing sites to have school street projects would need to be selective, the meeting was told, due to the cost of application for traffic regulation orders (TROs), which cost £15,000 each and the county has 315 primary schools – £4.73 million worth if all were applied for. Mr Bound said there was competing “agro” over the school street schemes, with parents being agitated about the restrictions and residents calling for intervention due to vehicles “mounting the pavement”, with head teachers feeling trapped in the middle.
He said: “It is a culture change we are looking for. There is a drive-through culture and it is like a McDonald’s where parents want to be able to drive through and drop off their child and then drive off. There will be some backlash. We are a motorhead, petrol-led society where some people think it is their right to be able to drive their car everywhere.”
He said Birmingham has 400 schools but only 10 school street areas, which demonstrates that not all areas are suitable for such schemes. Mr Bound said: “There are isolated rural schools where there is no alternative and faith schools where the catchment is far wider, where TROs might not be suitable.
“We have no jurisdiction to make schools do it and schools are not responsible to do anything, but some choose to due to the bad press they get. If they want to, any school can start the process.”
We send out the biggest stories in an email every day. Sign up for the main Derbyshire Live newsletter here.