A ROAD safety campaigner, who was promised a review of traffic measures around her children’s school, has told of her “massive disappointment” at the lack of progress over the past five months.
Members of the Walksafe N14 campaign lobbied Barnet Council to introduce safe crossings, more yellow lines and 20mph speed limits in the roads surrounding Osidge Primary School, in Chase Way, Southgate.
The group presented a petition, signed by thousands, to the council’s business management overview and scrutiny committee in October. The school is situated just over the borough border.
But despite cabinet member for environment Dean Cohen promising to launch a review of the roads around the school, campaign leader Cait O’Riordan says she has since been met with a wall of silence.
“They emailed me and arranged a meeting for December, which then got cancelled,” said the mother-of-two. “I escalated it to (highways manager) Neil Richardson and he got back to me some weeks later and said he’d get back to me within a time frame. That hasn’t happened.”
She added: “The committee meeting was really positive and it was fantastic that they were going to look into it. It just feels like nothing has happened since then. It is a massive disappointment.
“The only explanation I have is they think if they ignore it long enough it will be kicked into the long grass and we will go away quietly.
“Every day they don’t do something is another day when the kids are walking to school in dangerous conditions.”
Earlier this month a cross-party parking policy committee recommended that cabinet give all Barnet schools the power to opt in o a 20mph scheme on surrounding roads.
Speaking to this paper yesterday, Mr Cohen said a survey on the roads surrounding Osidge School had been completed and locations for new crossings had been identified.
However, he said the council wanted to wait and see if cabinet approved the 20mph opt-in recommendation before implementing the new traffic regime. “We wanted to wait to see what happens at cabinet so we would be able to implement them all at the same time,” he said.
“There is no point in doing some things and then changing the surroundings. It is going to be a package.”
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