Road safety outside schools and crossing control assessments

Addressing local concerns about road safety outside your school

School road safety can be a frequently expressed concern. At school drop off and pick up times the roads in the immediate vicinity of schools can be especially busy. This often creates congestion, and can lead to expressions of frustration from motorists and residents, as well as complaints to schools asking them to look into how issues can be resolved.

As a school, you may feel that in response to such concerns you would like to get a professional opinion about the safety of the roads surrounding your school. To support this we have developed our Road Safety Outside Schools Policy which sets out the process our Safer Travel Team use to investigate and respond to concerns about road safety outside schools.

Our first recommendation however would be to consult with our Safer Travel Team to ensure there are no other options to consider before commissioning an assessment. For example, if your school does not already have one, we would strongly recommend developing a school travel plan first. The main aims will be to reduce the risk of collisions, to make the road feel safer, and to encourage more people to consider walking or cycling to and from school.

A school crossing patrol is one of the options that could be considered when investigating the safety issues outside a school. This is included within the policy.

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