Council urged to help with school street schemes

As reported by the BBC, road closure schemes outside schools are beginning to collapse due to volunteer fatigue

The measures for drop-off and pick-up times were implemented outside Windmill Primary School, Larkrise Primary School and St Ebbe’s Primary School in Oxford, and outside St Nicolas Primary School in Abingdon earlier this year.

Automatic number plate recognition cameras were set to be used to enforce the rules.

But they are yet to be installed.

Volunteers have been manning the cut-off points with barriers over the past months, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Oxford resident Jamie Clark has urged Oxfordshire County Council to release a timetable and provide a budget to pay for new staff where volunteers cannot continue to help.

“We were told cameras would be in by 1 November and we have no timetable whatsoever for their implementation,” Mr Clark said.

He added: “The schemes are beginning to collapse, people are moving back to their old ways and streets are beginning to get more dangerous.”

Councillor Andrew Gant, who is in charge of the county’s highways, thanked volunteers and said that while the authority intended to have cameras in place by the end of October there had been delays in obtaining them.

He added: “We all know what procurement issues are like, our officers are working extremely hard but they haven’t got them yet and I hope we will get over that problem as soon as we possibly can.”