Children from Hugh Gaitskell Primary School undertook an environmental audit of their routes to school last Thursday (3 March 2016).
A group of Year 5 and 6 pupils were joined by Councillors Angela Gabriel and Adam Ogilvie together with a Police Community Support Officer and Harriet Pickering from the organisation Living Streets.
Living Streets is a national charity that promotes walking. Hugh Gaitskell are participating in one of their projects: Walk Once a Week, encouraging school children to walk to school at least once a week. With one in five vehicles on the road at that time doing the school run, this could cut traffic congestion as well as increasing health in our children.
The group identified the following problems:
- the narrow pedestrian pathway into the school
- the lack of “school” warning signs in the local area, and
- the difficulty of crossing over at the mini-roundabout junction of Beeston Road/Old Lane/Town Street
Harriet explained: “Community Street Audits are a way to evaluate the quality of streets and spaces from the viewpoint of the people who use them, rather than those who manage them. Living Streets involve small groups of local residents – in this case school children – plus traders, councillors and officers to assess a route on foot, following which a detailed report is produced with recommendations.”
The report will go to the school, Leeds City Council and the ward Councillors.
It is good news that this kind of street safety has finally happened. As a parent of a child in year 5 who attends Beeston Primary, I am keen for my daughter to walk up to school so she can learn some independence & responsibility on her lead up to starting high school. However, the traffic and roads on her potential route up to Beeston primary from Old Lane where we live are fraught with dangerous levels of traffic and inadequate safe crossing places. I used to go to Hugh Gaitskell myself when it was a middle school in the early 90’s and walked up to school everyday. I want my child to be able to learn this important life skill, I refuse to wrap her up in cotton wool most of the time but the school journey around the all the Beeston Primary schools needs to be looked at closely by safety and traffic officials in the council.