Reigate primary school parking problems reach breaking point
PARENTS are demanding action over school-run travel chaos at an expanding primary.
Gridlock in the roads leading to Wray Common Primary School in Reigate is reducing parents and residents to shouting matches in the streets, and with cars sometimes mounting pavements to get through, some fear it is only a matter of time before a child is hurt.
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Parents want action over daily problems on roads around the school reks20121405e
The school, which is situated in residential cul-de-sac Kendal Close, will in September be taking an extra class for the third time in four years, meaning an additional 90 children coming and going.
The council installed some bollards last year and provided 20 extra bicycle spaces at the school, but parents say it is not enough.
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Mum-of-two Tess Powell, who lives in nearby Windermere Way, said: "There is complete gridlock and people start to lose their patience.
"There have not been any accidents yet, but there have been quite a few near misses."
Two months ago the school formed a travel plan action group, made up of staff and parents, to look at the issue.
Member Vanessa Naylor, who has two children at Wray Common, said the school was doing "everything in its power" to ease the problem, but blamed roads and education authority Surrey County Council for neglecting the issue.
"They have been most remarkable by their absence," she said.
"What we want is advice, support and real partnership – and it is just not forthcoming.
"There are daily instances of cars mounting kerbs. Tempers are flaring.
"There have been at least three occasions when there have been stand-up arguments, with people effing and blinding at each other while there have been children walking into school." Nicola Wood, whose two children go to the school, said: "It is a huge problem. If nobody parked in the first part of Windermere Way and Kendal Close, people could come in and out.
"But as it is, just seven parked cars means the whole school is in gridlock.
"We have asked if we can have a single yellow line here for an hour, it would be so simple."
Windermere Way resident Madeleine Rijndorp said the parking was "completely uncontrollable", and that she had regular run-ins with parents, who she "loathes with a passion".
A Surrey County Council spokesman said: "The school's location makes it very difficult to solve this issue without creating others. Introducing parking restrictions in neighbouring roads would probably just move the problem, and residents would be unlikely to welcome them outside their homes.
"And such restrictions only work if they are adhered to and enforced."
The council pledged to look at other possibilities as part of an upcoming parking review, and its local community road safety officer has been working with the head teacher to provide road safety training and encourage initiatives such as the "walking bus".
No one from Wray Common Primary School was available to comment.
Comments
by a1non
Thursday, May 24 2012, 11:28AM
“It is absolutely pointless Madeleine Rijndorp saying she loathes parents with a passion - if like myself with a child who was sent to a school too far away to walk to because we didn't get into our local school you have no option but to drive to school. Maybe this woman shouldn't have moved into a house near to a school if she feels that way - due to her lack of understanding I presume she isn't a parent herself or if she is I guess she is old and has no understanding of an increasing population where the councils are building more and more estates, like Park 25 and Watercolour, but not providing schools on them for the families who are moving there.”