This is an email from Councillor Quinn and the picture is the most recent email which is good news what we’re doing as a community is working and they know about our petition. Let’s keep going and put pressure on. Thank you each and everyone of you we can do it.

Hi Kirsty,

Thank you for your email and for sharing the petition with me. I appreciate you putting that together and would we be able to share it too on our facebook page to get signatures up. I want to get as much pressure put on the Council as possible for them to allow us a crossing here.

Just as an update on our efforts to get a crossing installed.

I had a meeting with council highways officers in September to discuss road safety issues in Kingswood. One of the main projects we discussed was getting a crossing on Richmond Lane to provide a safe walking route to the school / centre.

Frustratingly we have been told again that the Council will not support a crossing here. A PV2 survey was carried out last Autumn. This counts the number of vehicles using the road and the number of pedestrians crossing at various points towards the school over a normal 24 hour school day. The number of vehicles and pedestrians has to reach a certain threshold for the council to support a crossing which the last survey did not.

This means that not only have we been denied any funding towards a crossing - but we have also been told that if myself and Cllr Bisbey find the funding ourselves (for instance by saving our community budget up for a couple of years) there council would still not allow for a crossing to be installed because the pedestrian / vehicle threshold has not been met and it would 'set a precedent'.

I think this is absolute nonsense and we should be able to put a crossing here if the money is raised to do so. The area is growing and as this is a natural point for school-children to cross a busy road. Whether it passes a pedestrian / vehicle test is not important. It's the fact children are crossing and many vehicles don't stick to the 20mph limit.

I have escalated this to the Portfolio Holder for roads asking for him to intervene and hopefully at the very least allow for a crossing to be installed if funding is found.

Funding is another issue on top - as the crossing will be in the region of £50,000 and have ongoing maintenance and electricity costs - but we are happy to put a significant chunk of our Kingswood Community Budget towards this (we get £25,000 a year for projects in Kingswood) over a few years to fund it ourselves. If funding can be found from the council's central highways budget that will secure the crossing quicker. The council has also bid for Government funding for pedestrian and cycle infrastructure improvements around Kingswood and Bransholme. If that is successful I will be fighting for some of this money to go towards a crossing on Richmond Lane.

We have tried a number of times before to get a lollipop-person to help children cross Richmond Lane. Again we have been told no as the council does not have the resources. But again kingswood deserves its fair share of council resources and we will make this request again.

Thank you once more for creating and sharing the petition. If we can share it too that will be great. Local resident pressure is going to help push this forwards. I will update once I know more about whether the decision to not allow us a crossing can be reversed and also if we have been successful in our bid for Government funding for pedestrian infrastructure projects in Kingswood.

With best wishes,
Charles