Agenda item

Question

My question is on child safety outside Maiden Erlegh and Aldryngton schools on the Silverdale Road and surrounding roads. Last week there was an accident between a 13 yr old child and a car on the Silverdale Road. The child was taken to RBH, due to their injuries. A couple of years ago, 2 primary school children were pinned against a wall by a car, with severe injuries, which required an air ambulance. 

Child safety in this area needs urgent attention before a fatality occurs. Each school day at school drop off and pick up times, the roads around the school area are clogged with cars. Parents drive onto pavements, they block pavements to get into the Tesco car park to drop off or pick up their child(ren), so children have to walk on the main road to get to school! The parents don't care of the impact on surrounding pedestrians, as long as they can get as close to the school as possible. 

We need to reduce the number of cars in this area around the schools, can we install parking restrictions on Sevenoaks Road and barriers along certain stretches of Silverdale and Sevenoaks Roads, to protect the pedestrians?

Question

My question is on child safety outside Maiden Erlegh and Aldryngton Schools on the Silverdale Road and surrounding roads. Last week there was an accident between a 13 year old child and a car on the Silverdale Road.  The child was taken to RBH, due to their injuries.  A couple of years ago, two primary school children were pinned against a wall by a car, with severe injuries, which required an Air Ambulance. 

Child safety in this area needs urgent attention before a fatality occurs.  Each school day at school drop off and pick up times, the roads around the school area are clogged with cars.  Parents drive onto pavements, they block pavements to get into the Tesco car park to drop off or pick up their child(ren), so children have to walk on the main road to get to school!  The parents don't care of the impact on surrounding pedestrians, as long as they can get as close to the school as possible. 

We need to reduce the number of cars in this area around the schools, can we install parking restrictions on Sevenoaks Road and barriers along certain stretches of Silverdale and Sevenoaks Roads, to protect the pedestrians?

Answer

Thank you for your question, I completely agree with you about the issues around Silverdale Road and the school there.  I cycled up there about six months ago to talk to the Headmaster about it, to try and work out some form of design to improve the school accesses.  The issue we have got is that area is very constrained and not all the roads are in the control of the Borough Council, some of them are private.  We talked about all sorts of things and I have had Officers look at the layout of the land in front of the caretaker’s bungalow, and the land at the back of Aldryngton to see if there is anything that can be done.  So far it is proving really, really difficult because of the layout and the very narrow entrance, but we are trying.  I would therefore like to reassure you that we do understand the concerns of parents and residents over the traffic and road safety issues.

We are also working in partnership with schools to prepare travel plans that discourage unnecessary vehicle use during school days and introduce controls over on-street parking using waiting restrictions where this is possible to support residents.  As I said, unfortunately, in this area we do not have control of all the roads, and that is very difficult. 

Recently, in response to requests from residents, the Council has extended on-street parking controls in Silverdale Road to deter poor parking behaviour close to the schools.  Residents may request additional controls at any time via the Council’s website which will be fully assessed by Officers.  There is a regular cadence of new parking controls as these get assessed, so please get that referral request into the website. 

We are also limited about what we can do about people driving on pavements, and if you have evidence of that please will you contact the Police via 101, and they should do something about it as it is very dangerous.  Unfortunately, we do not have the ability to intervene on moving traffic offences at the moment.

Supplementary Question

After the successful prioritising of the pupil safety and the introduction of School Streets by Reading Borough Council, is this something that Wokingham Borough Council would be prepared to investigate for the Maiden Erlegh and Aldryngton area?

Supplementary Answer

I obviously cannot speak for my successor, whoever that may be, but certainly when the Highways Department was under my control, we were actively assessing School Streets.