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09
Jul
Council responds to claims of lack of enforcement at Harrogate school safety scheme
North Yorkshire Council has responded to claims that a pioneering car-free zone near a Harrogate school is in danger of collapse due to the lack of automatic number plate recognition cameras.
Beechwood Grove, which leads to 360-pupil Oatlands Junior School, is the only School Streets initiative in North Yorkshire.
The scheme, which bans cars from 8.30am to 9am and from 3pm to 3.45pm on schooldays, was introduced after a pupil was taken to hospital following a collision on the street in 2023.
However, Hazel Peacock, who led the campaign for the car-free zone, said the scheme was under threat due to a lack of automatic number plate recognition cameras to monitor and enforce the initiative.
Hazel Peacock
Ms Peacock told a Harrogate Town Council planning meeting last night (July 8) that the cameras were 18 months overdue.
She added that the council had bid to the Mayor of York and North Yorkshire’s transport fund, but there was no clarity on whether this money would be used for ANPR at the school.
Ms Peacock said:
We want to make sure that the budget that they [the council] have received includes spending on an ANPR camera for the school street in Harrogate.
In a response from the council’s highways department, which Iona Taylor, clerk at the town council, read aloud during the meeting, the authority said it had made no commitment over enforcement at the school.
However, it added that school street sites, including the one at Oatlands School, would be a contender for ANPR once the authority had completed a trial at Gowthorpe in Selby.
It said:
North Yorkshire Council have said that school streets sites will be contenders for the introduction of this sort of enforcement. But at no point has North Yorkshire Council ever made a commitment or promise to ANPR enforcement at Oatlands School.
Given the ongoing trial, we do not have a timeline for enforcement introduction at Oatlands School. We are engaging with the York and North Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority on the potential for the combined authority to fund camera installations at school street sites in North Yorkshire including Oatlands.
As these discussions are ongoing, I cannot provide any further reassurance or timescales at this stage. The traffic engineering team are actively pursuing camera funding options with the combined authority and should money become available we will look to introduce the cameras at the earliest opportunity with any lessons learned from the Gowthorpe site.
Mayor David Skaith and Rhiannon Letman-Wade, Active Travel Commissioner for York and North Yorkshire, during an active travel fund launch at the school street scheme in Harrogate.
The Stray Ferret asked York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority, which appointed Rhiannon Letman-Wade as its first active travel commissioner on a salary of up to £60,000-a-year to “to make the region a place where people feel safer and more confident to walk, wheel and cycle” and oversee a £4 million active travel fund, if it intended to step-in at Oatlands as requested.
In response, Ms Letman-Wade said:
We will continue working with Active Travel England and North Yorkshire Council to progress new School Streets and active travel schemes across York and North Yorkshire. We also welcome North Yorkshire Council's application to the Mayoral Transport Fund to support the delivery of additional School Streets, helping more communities benefit from safer school journeys.
We particularly recognise the fantastic work of the Oatlands School community. The success of the School Street trial is a testament to the commitment of pupils, parents, staff and local campaigners. We support the school's ambition to secure permanent ANPR camera enforcement and will work with partners to help deliver the long-term future of this successful scheme.
Councillors on Harrogate Town Council’s planning committee resolved to write to the council and combined authority requesting that the school street in Harrogate is allocated an ANPR camera.
Ms Peacock wants the cameras to be installed in time for this year's autumn term.
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