Petition relating to Road Safety and Parking Issues Near Hatch Warren School, Basingstoke

Thank you for your petition.

As the Highway Authority, Hampshire County Council deal with many parking related complaints and we are aware that these issues can be a cause of great frustration for residents. The County Council’s policy is to support traffic management or parking measures and traffic regulation where evidence clearly indicates that it will offer direct benefits in terms of road casualty reduction, focusing on those sites where there is a related road casualty collision history and where a treatable pattern or common causation of casualty collisions can be identified.

With no history of road casualty collisions, I’m afraid this location is a low priority for investigation from our limited budgets compared with other sites across the county which already have evident safety concerns. A link to the County Council’s policy can be viewed via the following link, along with further information on associated policy and criteria for specific traffic management measures. Making roads safer.

The County Council’s Parking Service Team receive a high number of requests for enforcement outside of schools at the start and end of the day. Our Civil Enforcement Officers have visited Hatch Warren School, three times during the last term and they are aware of the issues surrounding this school. This level of enforcement is in line with other similar schools across the county, due to limited available resources we are unable to guarantee more frequent visits.

Whilst enforcement is an important part of managing parking outside of schools, alone it cannot resolve the issues currently being experienced. Colleagues from across our Parking Services, Travel Planning and Road Safety Teams work closely to provide an effective and joined up approach.

Both Hatch Warren Junior and Infant schools are proactive with road safety education and have, for many years, participated in many of our initiatives and programmes such as Walk to School Week, Junior Road Safety Officers, Pedestrian Safety Poster Competition, Your Time to Shine and Pedestrian & Cycle Safety Workshops

In summary, I appreciate that we have extremely limited means to provide you with a positive response to the requests set out in your petition and I understand this is going to be a disappointment for you and your fellow petitioners.  I hope however that I have been able to explain that we are doing, and will continue to do, what we can with the resources available to us.

It may also help to mention that we welcome Community Funded Initiatives to help deliver those requests that we are simply unable to afford.  More information about this can be found on our website at the link provided above.

Thank you again for your petition and the opportunity to comment.

Yours sincerely

Patrick Blogg
Director of Universal Services