Bucklesham School highways issues
Problems with parents' driving and bad parking at the school is the number one topic that residents contact the Parish Council about. Along with Bucklesham School Head Teacher, Rachael Rudge, the Council has worked tirelessly to encourage safer driving and parking.
Rachael Rudge is in continual contact with the Parish Council, and the School Community and the Council have tried numerous initiatives to improve the situation.
To address this on-going problem, Bucklesham Parish Council has written a strongly worded letter to all parents, contacted Suffolk Highways for advice, contacted Suffolk Police for support, left leaflets on illegally parked cars, cleared the path to school to encourage walking, and requested Hi-Viz jackets from the Community Partnership to encourage walking by making it safer.
Members of the Council have also patrolled outside the school and approached parents. None of the initiatives have worked and parents continue to flout the law and park illegally, and some of those who have challenged parents have been subjected to abuse on more than one occasion. The Clerk has also engaged the services of ESC’s Parking Services Team, who pledged to be a presence at school drop-off and pick-up times and carry out parking enforcement.
Rachael Rudge shares residents' frustrations about the ongoing issues and she has implemented many initiatives since becoming Head Teacher which include:
- Junior Road Safety Officers x 4 (only older children)
- Assemblies to educate children on where their parents should park and about walking to school
- Communications with parents through regular newsletters
- Patrolling at the end of the day
- Booking Suffolk Highways to do road safety workshops with children in May, and do this annually as part of PSHE lessons
- Writing newsletter pleas on road safety most weeks
- Challenging parking and driving face to face with parents, and phoning them up to discuss
- Successfully applying for grants from East Suffolk Council to pay for: art activism project with local artist Jo Chapman, Hi-Viz for those older children that walk, subscription to Living Streets, WOW challenge which encourages and rewards children who walk or cycle to school with badges etc
- 'Walk, Scoot, Bike to school' weeks throughout the year with rewards for children who do
- Providing Bikeability courses for older children every November to teach them how to bike to school safely on their own
- Looking to increase the capacity of the staff car park by using some of the school field to get more staff cars off the road to allow space for parents to park
- Requesting the Traffic warden comes once a month, giving parking fines and advice
- Initiating the possibility of a 'walking bus' into the village at the end of the day.
Bucklesham Parish Council will continue to fully support Miss Rudge, who has clearly tried very hard to solve this problem. However, neither the Parish Council or the Head Teacher has any power to enforce this.
