Parents and local residents braved the drizzle at Windmill Primary School on Friday morning to protest inconsiderate and unsafe driving around the perimeters of their School Street.

Families banded together with two goals: to show members of the school community who consistently cause problems at drop off the danger they are causing for other families, and to remind the council that the Windmill School Street is poorly protected by other traffic reduction measures, and needs further support for it to work as intended.

A team from Oxford North East Neighbourhood policing team supported the protest. Local Councillors Chris Smowton and Roz Smith were in attendance, alongside the Headteacher of Quarry Foundation Stage School Natalie Wilson. Councillor Andrew Gant dropped by at the beginning to hear parent’s concerns.

Families held signs and chanted slogans on the corners of Margaret Road with Wharton and St Anne’s Road and at the junction of York and Weyland Road. These junctions are on the boundaries of the School Street, and frequently suffer from pavement parking and parking on yellow lines that makes it very difficult for families to cross roads safely.

Parent Anjali De Butts commented that “We want Windmill’s parent community to work together to keep our streets safe for our children. We all know double yellows are there for a reason, so why wait till accidents happen?” Parent Laura Swift added “The walk to school has been scary recently, so it was incredibly positive to see the community coming out to support each other and keep our children safe.”

Becky Carlyle, parent and member of Headington Liveable Streets, expressed her frustration at the lack of traffic reduction measures taken around the Windmill School Street: “The huge number of fines issued for the Windmill School Street shows that the School Street alone is not working as intended. Without other measures for decreasing traffic flow, we’ll continue to see unsafe driving on the boundaries of the School Street zone, and violations coming from cut-through traffic from the ring-road.”

Families hope to work together with the council to convert problematic corners around the School Street to no stopping zones, to improve the signage around the street, and to continue to promote safe ways to walk and wheel to school.

See coverage of the protest by the Oxford Clarion and the BBC.

Related stories

• Figures recently released by Oxfordshire County Council and reported in the Oxford Mail show that the School Street scheme at Windmill Primary School has the highest level of violations (i.e. people driving through despite the prohibition):
• School streets in Oxfordshire raise over £300k in fines
• Which school streets in Oxfordshire gave out the most fines?
• When the Windmill School Street was introduced it made a huge difference to the safety of children, but became less safe and less effective once physical barriers and stewards were replaced with ANPR cameras, as recounted in our Review of the Windmill School Street: ANPR vs barriers
• Although the Windmill School Street creates a relatively safe space right outside the school, it doesn't make children's routes to school any safer, as described in our post Spotlight on school travel: no safe routes for children in Headington - part 2.