Due to the expansion of the Vineyard School to 3-form entry, the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames is proposing to create a pedestrian walkway from the Vineyard School through the grounds of Maria Grey Nursery School to Palmerston Court driveway.  This would be for Year 5 and 6 pupils who walk to and from school alone. 

We oppose this plan because it would compromise the safety and security of both the nursery children and the Vineyard children.  Palmerston Court driveway can be used by vehicular traffic at any time.  As well as residents' and their visitors' cars, there are refuse trucks reversing up the driveway, many delivery vans and other vehicles dropping off, picking up and performing U-turns on the driveway.  There have been several police-reported incidents of dangerous driving in the past.  

At school start and finish times there are already 36 nursery families with buggies, scooters and bikes outside the nursery gates.  To have a hundred older unsupervised children trying to negotiate their way through would cause problems for all concerned.

There are also child protection considerations on an unsupervised publicly-accessible driveway.

If older children were allowed to walk through the nursery playground and non-nursery staff were monitoring the gates, this would compromise the safety of the nursery children.

If a pathway were created around the edge of the nursery playground this would reduce by a quarter the existing playground space for the nursery's 36 children per session.  This is unacceptable when children's outdoor play is part of the Early Years curriculum and opportunities for outside play should be increased. The Vineyard School, even when the expansion is complete, will still have more square footage of grounds per child than the nursery has.

There would be more noise and nuisance for Palmerston Court residents.

The proposal is unworkable.

We propose that the existing Vineyard driveway should be widened by removing the bushes at the side of the driveway.  We propose that retractable bollards should be installed at the Vineyard gates, which would allow the large gates to be opened at school start and finish times, ensuring freer flow of pedestrians without vehicles being able to access the driveway.