No crossing outside Leighton Buzzard school due to funding cuts
A pedestrian crossing cannot be provided outside Dovery Academy in Leighton Buzzard, despite a 314-signature petition in support, because of funding cuts faced by a local authority, a meeting heard.
Resident Rhiannon Smith, who began the petition, told a Central Bedfordshire Council traffic management meeting: “Heath Road is crossed daily by children and parents with buggies.
“With the increased amount of vehicles from the new estate being built, the traffic, including HGVs, has increased massively,” she warned.
“At school time, that road is completely impassable. Unfortunately, someone is going to get hurt. I’ve seen multiple near misses, with parents screaming children’s names to stop them running across the road.
“We try to encourage road safety, but there are times as a parent when I’m halfway across and telling my child to almost run. Heath Road is one incredibly long straight road and it’s a 30mph zone.
“It’s not obvious there are two schools nearby. There’s the odd signage that’s unclear and the school signs on the road are worn. No safe crossing point exists for Dovery Academy, but Heathwood Lower School has one.”
The change.org petition is viewed as 127 signatures by the local authority, which only counts those of Central Bedfordshire residents.
Liberal Democrat Leighton Linslade North councillor David Bligh said: “This area gets very busy, as it’s a wide road with limited visibility from the Heath and Reach end.
“Parents parking along that section makes it tricky. But a traffic survey showed no speed excess and overall was within acceptable bounds.
“With a new crossing, drivers would recognise it’s a school zone requiring them to slow down. This would make driving aggressively along the road pointless, especially around school drop off and pick up times.
“Wouldn’t it be feasible to factor in some Section 106 (developer) money to pay for this?” he asked.
CBC’s head of traffic management Kyle Stewart explained: “There was a site review by officers, after receiving the petition.
“Initial monitoring in 2024 showed the mean speeds were around 27mph, below the 30mph limit. The case for a crossing on speeding grounds isn’t present. There were regular breaks in the traffic to cross the road safely.
“There were 19 pedestrians, 11 accompanied children and eight parents. With these numbers involved, the level of investment for a crossing at this location, which is unlikely to be widely used outside school times, wouldn’t be proportionate to the issue.
“I’d be happy to look at Section 106 funding possibilities, in proximity to this road. We’d still aim to spend any money on the appropriate measures for the site, and a crossing isn’t necessarily the right thing.”
Independent Aspley and Woburn councillor John Baker, who chairs the meeting, said: “Clearly we can’t afford to do anything now because of the cuts in our funding.
“This matter deserves more attention. But without the finance in place, there’s no point in further design work at this stage. We refresh the highways plan yearly, so that comes round again in November or December.
“Given there’s no immediate crossing nearby, we’ll look into this and check whether there’s any funding source available to see what we can progress.”