Girton & Oakington Safely Home Campaign

School bus is saved

The recent decision by Cambridge County Council to stop the free school bus for some of the children in Girton and Oakington was reversed under appeal following a hard-fought campaign by parents with support from local Councillors.

The appeal was based purely on the safety of the route and was heard by three independent County Councillors on the 21st May. The Councillors released the following statement after the hearing:

"The Committee has carefully considered all aspects of the evidence, including evidence found on our site visit.

We have concluded that the route as currently laid out does not meet the test of enabling an accompanied child to walk to school with reasonable safety. We find the route to be unsafe in two respects:

Firstly, at the junction of Park Lane and Oakington Road, we find that the inadequate visibility from the path, the width of the crossing, the complexity of vehicle movements at the junction, and the speed of some vehicles at the junction, combine to make this crossing unsafe. In our opinion, improvements could be made to this junction that would make it safe.

Secondly, we consider that the shared use path, especially on Park Lane adjacent to a road with a 60mph speed limit, is too narrow to offer reasonable safety to pedestrians due to the lack of space afforded to them by passing cyclists. This conclusion is based on the combination of actual circumstances in this particular location. Again, we believe that improvements could be made which would make the path safe."

This was a very gruelling campaign, necessitating many hours of work: thank you to all those involved. We should also like to thank those people who, although not directly involved, took the time to help, send messages of support and even give up their time to come to the hearing. Finally we should like to thank the three Councillors for the extremely fair way the conducted the hearing.