Children's lives are being put at risk near a Borehamwood primary school because the county council has not provided adequate traffic calming measures according to a headteacher.

Deborah Purrett, headteacher at Saffron Green Primary in Nicoll Way, says that although the road outside her school is used as a rat-run by drivers pulling off the A1, the county has done little to slow down traffic.

But the county insists that surveys conducted during school hours showed traffic was not really a problem, and that cars travelled along the road at under 30mph.

Together with concerned parents, school governors and with the support of Brian York, county councillor for Elstree and Borehamwood South, the school put together a petition which it handed to the council in February calling for a pedestrian crossing and other traffic calming measures.

Mrs Purrett said: "We are on a shortcut from the A1 to Borehamwood and the fact is that a lot of traffic uses this road. It only takes one car to kill a child and for the sake of the cost of a crossing, we appear to be playing with children's lives."

Although the school, which has 210 pupils aged three to 11, has had a pathway and mini zebra crossing installed and its school gates moved inwards as part of the council's Safer Routes to School scheme, Mrs Purrett maintains that its requests for other measures were ignored.

"All the other schools seem to have some sort of crossing and traffic calming", she said. "Now, because we have not got these speed humps that other schools have, we are even more of a cut through for drivers."

Unconvinced by the council's road survey, Mrs Purrett said: "Cars travelling at 30mph are very dangerous to children. Anyone living on Nicoll Way will tell you that a lot of cars use the road.

"Fortunately we have not had an accident at the school, but if there was one we would go to the top of the list".

Engineering work costing £400,000 recently completed under the council's Safer Routes to School project has seen new pedestrian crossings and various traffic calming measures installed around schools in Borehamwood.

Head of the project, Magedie Pretorious, said: "In the next couple of weeks school flashing lights will be installed at Saffron Green school, but I do not think that it is justified to put more traffic calming measures in Nicoll Way.

"We are constrained by a limited budget and measures were much more urgently needed on nearby Ripon Way", he explained.

Mrs Purrett said: "I welcome the school being identified as a zone where motorists need to take care, but really the thing we need more than anything else is an adequate crossing and something that will slow the traffic down.

"I am really hopeful that the county council will see sense and use some of this year's budget to put the situation right."

May 7, 2003 16:00