Dad’s fears over crossing safety

A dad says his infant daughter was almost struck by a car outside her school where there has been no crossing patrol for more than a year.

Father-of-three Aidan Simister says that his five-year-old daughter was crossing the road to Rolvenden Primary School with her mum when she tripped over and fell.

“A car had to brake quite heavily to avoid hitting my daughter and my wife was in hysterics,” he said.

“The school is on a blind corner on one side and on the other side the speed limit reduces from 60mph to 30mph quite suddenly.

“There have been at least four other near misses involving children in the last few months and it’s only a matter of time before there is a serious incident.”

The IT boss, 42, also says the flashing lights on a sign outside the Hastings Road school stating ‘School 20 when lights show’ are never activated, but enquires to the school itself and KCC Highways about why this is have so far drawn a blank.

Mr Simister said: “More should be done to get a crossing patrol and it’s not enough to put the job on a website.”

A KCC spokesman said: “Rolvenden School has a road crossing patrol site which has been vacant since March 2018.

“Between the school and KCC we have placed five adverts as well as the school trying to recruit internally.”

KCC’s safer mobility team re-listed the job last week, having received no applications and the spokesman added: “KCC regret that this [situation] is not uncommon as we have a number of vacancies across the county which remain unfilled, indeed this is an issue that many other counties experience.

“KCC is working closely with the school and the community in order to get the position filled and ask if anyone is interested to take a look at the KCC jobs’ page and search for road crossing patrol.”

Dad-of-three Aidan Simister