Vicky Carr is a journalist turned writer who grew up in Harrogate and returned in her late 20s to raise her family here. Find her on Instagram @vickycarrwrites.

Last week, the Stray Ferret reported that a scheme designed to protect children travelling to and from school is at risk of collapse.

For the last few years, Beechwood Grove has been closed to traffic at the beginning and end of the school day.

Its closure was prompted by escalating safety concerns over a number of years, as parents squeezed cars down the narrow cul-de-sac, tried to pass each other in a single-file space, and blocked driveways and footpaths in the process.

Repeated warnings about safety failed to deliver any improvement, and this recipe for disaster culminated in a pupil being hit by a car and taken to hospital.

Less than a month later, there was a collision outside another school in Harrogate, in which two boys on foot were very seriously injured and needed multiple operations over the course of several months.

On the back of those incidents, there was widespread support for improving safety measures outside schools. As well as the School Streets scheme on Beechwood Grove, designed to make it safer for families travelling on foot or by bike or scooter, a blanket 20mph limit was imposed across quiet roads in south and west Harrogate.

Almost four years on, however, we’re in danger of forgetting the lessons we learned in 2023. Once again, we’re choosing convenience over the safety of our own children.

Can anything be done to save the scheme?

While it would be wonderful to return to a time when everyone walked to school, we have to be realistic.

These days, especially in Harrogate, getting your child into the “best” school seems paramount, even if that means a 40-minute round-trip in the car, passing five other schools en route.

And for most families, the school run forms part of the commute: parents drop children off on their way to work, so driving may be a necessity. For many parents, walking their children from home to school every day isn’t an option.

However, that’s not what this scheme was about.

The closure of Beechwood Grove was designed to make the area directly outside the school safer. A park-and-stride scheme was announced, allowing parents to leave the car a short distance from school and walk the final stretch, moving cars away from the immediate vicinity of the school gates.

It was well thought through, with the agreement of car park owners at Hornbeam Park, M&S and St Mark’s Church giving a walk of between five and 15 minutes. Perfectly manageable for the vast majority of people.

So what has gone wrong?

The Beechwood Grove School Streets project is in danger of collapse, we’re told, because it isn’t being enforced. North Yorkshire Council won’t stump up the cash to install ANPR cameras and the school, quite reasonably, is unable to staff barriers at the beginning and end of the day.

But let’s take a step back from that.

Why is enforcement needed? There are permanent signs advising that the road is closed from 8.30-9am, and from 3-3.45pm. But that, it seems, is not enough.

Knowing that the scheme is no longer enforced, parents are choosing to disregard the signs and use the road anyway. The more people do it, the more others will see them doing it and follow suit. Over time, the scheme will become totally meaningless, as parents realise there are no consequences to ignoring it.

Well, unless you include potential serious injury to children, of course, which it seems they do not.

And even when the closure was being enforced with staffed barriers, parents still couldn’t follow instructions.

One local parent told me that the road closure was a “nightmare” because it just moved the problem to other nearby streets. Parents – despite knowing the designated park-and-stride routes – now squeezed their cars into ever diminishing roadside spaces to drop off and collect their children as close as physically possible to school.

Somehow, a scheme designed to protect children was being blamed for individuals’ decisions to ignore it.

It’s not just Oatlands, of course – this is an issue outside every school across Harrogate, and indeed most of the country.

Every day, parents choose to drive when they could walk, to make risky manoeuvres, or to park in dangerous spots, because they think the rules don’t apply to them, or it’s “just this once” (it never is).

The car is king

And it’s not only parents. I can’t count the number of times I’ve witnessed cars and vans driving along and parking on pavements at all times of day, completely blocking the path and forcing pedestrians into the road.

A van driver once asked me to move out of the way, as I pushed my toddler in the pushchair, so he could reverse along the pavement on Leeds Road and make space for another car to park on the path beside him.

Undeniably, the car is king in Harrogate.

We may know, on paper, that we shouldn’t drive down that road, or block the pavement, or wait on yellow lines outside the school gate – but still we make the quicker, easier choice, for our own convenience.

We can’t be trusted to behave responsibly, to follow the rules and to make better decisions, unless someone is there to enforce those rules and deliver consequences if we break them.

So in the absence of a total cultural shift in the way the school run works, enforcement is essential. NYC must act to protect children and install cameras on Beechwood Grove. Otherwise, the consequences could be catastrophic.

If only we could be trusted to do the right thing, even when nobody was watching, simply because it was the right thing to do. Wouldn’t Harrogate be a better place?