Statement from King Edward’s School on the North Road Active Travel Scheme Consultation

As a School, we have always been keen to support sustainable travel initiatives and have, for example, invested heavily in our extensive coach service and in our facilities for those staff and pupils wishing to cycle to the School.  Indeed, we are proud that an increasing number of staff and pupils are choosing to come to School by foot, bike or coach and the fact that all our coaches are now Clean Air Zone compliant.
 
Whilst in principle we are supportive of the Council's work to promote sustainable travel, we have a number of concerns about the potential impacts of the proposed scheme for North Road. As currently designed, we believe that aspects of the Scheme could impact the safety not only of our pupils and staff crossing North Road, but all cyclists and pedestrians who use North Road as part of their journey, including those accessing the University, Ralph Allen School and Bathwick St Mary Church School. In addition, the resulting change in traffic flows and density are likely to have a significant impact on our local residents in North Road, Cleveland Walk and Bathwick Hill. 
 
We recently wrote to our parents to make them aware of the public consultation which is currently being run by the Council. In this letter to parents we noted specific aspects of the Scheme over which we have concerns. In addition, we noted that we were disappointed that Council representatives had not taken the opportunity to visit the School prior to the final Scheme being published and the current consultation going live. 

We believe that such a visit to the School to meet with us on location was vital to enabling the Council to see first-hand the potential impact of the proposed Scheme on the safety of all road users - pedestrians, cyclists and drivers alike - as it was evident from previous conversations with the Council that there were misunderstandings about the road layout and traffic flows associated with the School.  

Unfortunately, such a site visit did not take place before the proposed Scheme was published and the public consultation launched on 22nd February 2021.  Our first meeting at the School with Council Representatives was on Thursday 11th March 2021.

The School is currently in the process of finalising our response to the consultation and this will be submitted later this week.