Traffic chaos in Penrith at peak school run times is to be addressed by the highways authorities.
Cumbria County Council’s highways team is looking for solutions to traffic chaos in areas of Penrith, in particular outside Beaconside Primary School in the mornings and at 3pm.
Penrith East county councillor Patricia Bell gave an update on efforts to tackle the issue at a recent Penrith Town Council meeting.
She said: “The town council may have noticed the consultation on managing the Beaconside School traffic differently. It happened a few weeks ago.
“School traffic is a real problem around the school and this was an opportunity to see if a project offered by the Government would work. The idea was to keep the school traffic further away from the school.
“There was an excellent response to the consultation. Many people responded and what was clear was the problems we thought were a problem really are a problem and it also identified other problems.
“Both the parents whose children go to the school and the local people felt the scheme offered wasn’t going to be the solution so instead the highways officer is going to look at each of the problem areas in turn to try and find a solution for those particular areas.”
The public were consulted on plans to close the road outside Beaconside Church of England Primary School during muster times under the School Streets Initiative.
But following a number of objections from members of the public, a decision was made not to bring in the Experimental Traffic Order.
Cllr Bell said: “I wanted to reassure the town council that [road safety] is high on everyone’s agenda because at the minute, there are some aspects of going to school at Beaconside that aren’t so very safe.”
Speaking at a meeting of Cumbria County Council’s Local Committee for Eden in October, highways officer Laura McClellan explained the decision not to implement a traffic order.
She said: “The majority of objections were from residents and parents. That therefore identifies to me that the scheme wouldn’t work. If it’s not supported by the residents or the parents then people are just going to proceed to drive through the road closure.
“The road closure would only be signed, the school would be provided with barriers or cones and it would be for the school to support and the police to enforce.
“Through the consultation we also received comments from the local PCSO who again wasn’t in support of the scheme and felt that the scheme would cause more problems and require more enforcement from the police.”
