Village unites on road safety
Villagers are being urged to work together to improve safety on a busy road near a school.
Staff, parents of children at Kneesall Primary School and villagers were among those who attended a meeting to discuss the school’s travel plan on Friday.
Children aged ten-11 checked the speed of traffic on Ossington Road between 8am and 9am on Friday.
They used a mobile sign that displayed the speed of a vehicle as it approached.
Several vehicles were found to be speeding and one was travelling at 39mph in the 30mph limit.
The school’s head, Mrs Sue Ilett-Coupe, said drivers had obviously slowed when they saw the sign.
She said the children would carry out a traffic survey at different times of the day from March 10-14 and would pass the results to the county council.
Concerns were raised about the safety of children walking in the village, particularly after a lorry overturned into the garden of a house on Main Street last week.
Mrs Ilett-Coupe said there was a pre-school in St Bartholomew’s Church and schoolchildren walked to the church at least once a week for services, assemblies and other activities.
She said they took a big risk every time the children visited the church. She said it was a miracle nobody had been injured.
The county council previously said the village did not meet the council’s criteria for a permanent interactive speed sign based on traffic flow.
It has agreed to provide a temporary sign in one location for a maximum of three months.
Those at the meeting questioned why there was a permanent interactive sign on Wellow Road, Ollerton, as they were not aware of any accidents on that road and estimated that it would have a similar amount of traffic as Kneesall.
Mrs Ilett-Coupe said she understood the council had a limited budget but the signs would be a preventative measure.
A Kneesall, Kersall and Ompton parish councillor, Mr Trevor Kirk, of Baulk Lane, Kneesall, said villagers and parents should highlight road safety problems in individual letters to the MP for Newark, Mr Patrick Mercer, the county councillor for the area, Mr Bruce Laughton, the senior police officer for Newark and Sherwood, Chief Inspector Mark Holland, and the county council’s cabinet member for environment, Mrs Stella Smedley.
It was suggested the children should also write letters as part of a school project.
A resident, Glynda Green, of Main Street, said people needed to work together.
She said she sympathised with residents who wanted a wider footpath between the 30mph signs at the entrance to the village and the Angel Inn.
She said it was very intimidating walking along the footpath but a 20ft path would not save the lives of pedestrians in some circumstances.
Representatives from the county council’s road safety team who were at the meeting agreed to provide the council’s figures for the number of accidents between Ompton and the Kersall crossroads on the A616 and along Ossington Road from the Laxton crossroads.
