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03
Jul
School safety scheme in Harrogate in danger of collapse, warns campaigner
A pioneering scheme to create a car-free zone outside a Harrogate school is in danger of failing due to council inaction, a campaigner has warned.
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.
It has transformed a “hostile and dangerous cul-de-sac into a safe, welcoming space for hundreds of schoolchildren, parents, carers and residents”, according to Hazel Peacock, who has been at the forefront of a campaign involving parents, headteachers and councillors for better safety on streets outside schools in Harrogate.
Beechwood Grove before School Streets.
But Ms Peacock said the School Streets initiative, and the accompanying bike bus to the school, which you can read more about here, were in danger of collapsing.
Staff have patrolled barriers at the junction of Beechwood Grove and Hookstone Road to prevent traffic entering since the scheme began.
It had been hoped North Yorkshire Council would install automatic number plate recognition cameras to monitor traffic instead. But there is still no sign of this happening and now the school is struggling to afford to pay staff to patrol the barriers, and consequently the initiative is happening less frequently.
Hazel Peacock
Ms Peacock urged York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority to urgently intervene at a meeting yesterday (July 2)
She said the council committed to ANPR as a “sustainable solution for enforcement from the outset” and pledged to introduce it in spring last year after a six-month trial in Selby.
Ms Peacock added:
One year on, North Yorkshire Council advise the ANPR trial is planned for this summer but cannot give a date. This is deeply concerning for the school and local community, and everyone is beginning to feel let down.
The future of the operation is under threat due to ongoing challenges with the delivery of ANPR by North Yorkshire Council. Now 18 months overdue, with no date for installation.
No reminder is needed as to how perilous Beechwood Grove cul-de-sac was prior to the scheme, and of the collision in January 2023 involving several vehicles which resulted in the significant injury and hospitalisation of a school pupil.
Our children and our community deserve safety and safe spaces.
Heading to school in Harrogate with the Oatlands bike bus.
Ms Peacock also raised the subject at a Harrogate Town Council meeting this week.
That meeting heard the council was now considering implementing the ANPR trial on Victoria Avenue in Harrogate rather than Selby.
Ms Peacock said if Harrogate were chosen, Beechwood Grove would be the obvious place to trial the technology.
The Stray Ferret has asked North Yorkshire Council, which is the highways authority, to respond to Ms Peacock’s claims.
We have also asked the 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.
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