Funding for school crossings goes pop
SCHOOLS are facing cuts to lollipop patrol funding.
Rochdale council bosses could axe lollipop crossing patrols at 40 schools that are rated as ‘low risk,’ according to a report.
Official papers last week revealed that the cash-strapped authority was to cut crossing patrols at dozens of primary and secondary schools.
Town hall chiefs say they can no longer afford to pay for lollipop patrols where the road safety risk to pupils has been rated low by its highways department.
However, they refused to release the names of the schools affected on the grounds the decision – made in private by cabinet members – was still within a 10-day call-in period.
But a reporter for this newspaper has now seen a document which was used to rate crossings as red, amber or green (high, moderate or low risk), with those in the last category facing the chop.
A total of 40 schools have been identified that will lose at least one crossing, according to the assessment. But, two of them, Deeplish Academy and St Andrews CE Primary, do currently pay for their designated patrols, the assessment states.
Some schools share crossings, and documents suggest a total of 31 patrols could be withdrawn unless governors opt to pay the council £4,000-per-year to keep them going.
Some schools have more than one crossing and will keep paid-for patrols at points where the road safety risk is high or moderate, but would lose them where rated low.
Hollin Primary School, Middleton, will have to pay to keep its Waverley Road patrol from September but it will continue to be served via shared crossings at Rochdale Road and Hollin Lane.
Others, such as St Patrick’s RC Primary School, in Foxholes Road, faces potentially losing its three patrols, all shared. One shared patrol that will no longer be paid for by the council is the one at Caldershaw Road/Cut Lane, which serves St Vincent’s RC Primary School, Norden Community Primary and Caldershaw Community Primary.
Chiefs say that school resources have also been assessed in coming to the decision, and the charge is relatively small.
But Jane Norton, headteacher at Crossgates Primary School, Milnrow, said the money should be going on pupils’ education, not filling in for council cuts.
Liberal Democrat leader Coun Andy Kelly described the move as ‘both dangerous and emotive.’
He said: “In Milnrow and Newhey for example, patrols on Kiln Lane (for Crossgates) and Huddersfield Road (for both Newhey CP and St Thomas CE schools) are being withdrawn.
“These are not only two of the most dangerous and overcrowded roads in our ward but, to add insult to injury, both are direct routes to proposed new housing plots in the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework.”