Childminder disheartened after his road safety feedback is 'fobbed off' by Doncaster Council
Children, parents and guardians walking to school have been using informal crossing points on a busy road.
The City of Doncaster Council’s plans to install new road safety infrastructure outside a local primary school are welcome, but they’re in the wrong place, a local man has said.
Childminder Terry Parker, aged 55, offered some feedback to the council after he discovered plans to install a raised table and speed bumps on Plumpton Park Road, outside Hatchell Wood Primary School.
He’d suggested changing the proposed location of the raised table – a crossing where the road is raised to the same height of the pavement on each side.
The council’s plans would see the crossing installed between the junction with Partridge Flatt Road and the school entrance. Mr Parker proposed moving it further up the road, towards Goodison Boulevard, between the junctions with Farnborough Drive and The Bramblings.
But, council officers declined to change the location, informing him they would press ahead as planned.
Mr Parker told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “Suggestions just get shut down.
“I would like to reassure residents that all feedback received has been considered and our primary concern is the safety of the road.”
“They were just fobbing me off. It’s like they have decided it’s going there and nothing is going to change their mind.”
He said the only people who would use the raised table in the council’s proposed location are “the handful of people who park on the other side of the road” to the school.
Children and parents arriving on foot from Bawtry Road already have a pedestrian crossing to put them on the correct side of Plumpton Park Road, Mr Parker added.
He said the location he’d proposed would be used by pedestrians approaching from Goodison Boulevard, who currently cross on the bend of Plumpton Park Road, which is not safe.
Mr Parker said he was extremely frustrated by the council’s disinterest in his feedback, adding he’d been taking children to and from Hatchell Wood Primary School, as a registered childminder, for 22 years and had “seen the issues first hand with traffic”.
Councillor Glyn Jones, deputy mayor and cabinet member for environment, housing and safer communities, said: “A raised table is to be installed at the existing informal crossing point on Plumpton Park Road. This is part of a wider traffic calming scheme designed to help reduce vehicle speeds in the vicinity of Hatchell Wood Primary Academy, with a particular focus on slowing vehicles approaching from Bawtry Road, which operates at a higher speed.
“The raised table will also support pedestrian movement at the existing informal crossing point and benefit users who are mobility impaired by facilitating easier and safer crossing. The location proposed is in-line with the current dropped crossing location which serves residential properties in the area and the school.
“I would like to reassure residents that all feedback received has been considered and our primary concern is the safety of the road.”