Agenda item

Emily Brough (Parking Project Engineer) summarised that:

• The objective of the project was to undertake remedial works required to enable enforcement of all school keep clear zones around primary schools in Warwickshire
• The Parking Management team receive lots of complaints/concerns/requests for enforcement around schools from head teachers, the police, councillors, and local residents
• The project is to improve safety of the school commute and promote active travel
• The project sits within the initiatives of the School Parking Working Group. They created a priority list set to a criteria
• To get this list the School Education team were liaised with and the parking survey data from 2021 was looked through along with data of collisions from the last five years within 300 metres of the school entrance sites. Any repeated expressions of concern received from the public was considered too
• The list was only draft at the time of the meeting
• If approved the project will then undertake TROs (traffic regulation orders) for the list and then it will go out to contractors to get the projects enforced

In response to the Chair, Emily Brough confirmed she looked at all primary schools in Warwickshire to get the ones on the list. Collisions involving pedestrians were prioritised along with the more severe collisions. All primary schools will get this eventually, but the listed schools would be prioritised first. The Chair noted that TROs are done in batches.

In response to the Councillor Chilvers, Emily Brough stated that most the work for the TROs had been done as they needed to do mapping for enforcement.

Following a supplementary from Councillor Chilvers, Emily Brough clarified that primary schools were focused on first as more commuters came in care but secondary schools could be looked at in the future.

Following a question from Councillor Bhagwant Pandher, Emily Brough said there would first be one enforcement vehicle for the listed locations to make sure it works, if successful they would obtain several for four years. The TRO had scope to instal static cameras outside schools, but it was unknown which schools would need these most. Therefore, the mobile vehicle would be installed first then static cameras could be investigated.

In response to Councillor Sinclair, Emily Brough said no timeframes were available yet as the TRO needed to be done first along with mapping for the contractors. She agreed to share details on the contractors timeframes when available.

In response to Councillor Mejar Singh, Emily Brough said that this scheme should lead to behavioural change and get parents to park further away from the school as the vehicles will be a physical presence. This will make the keep clear zone less congested.

Following a question from Councillor Baxter-Payne. Emily Brough confirmed that they were liaising with the School Education team and they were restarting the ‘cars and kids don’t mix’ campaign on educating parents to not park on or blocking drives of residents near schools.

Councillor Andy Crump (Portfolio Holder – Fire & Rescue and Community Safety) noted that the Active Travel team got funding from the DfT to make bespoke schemes with primary and secondary schools. He installed a 20mph limit around one of his schools in his division and this improved parent and resident’s behaviour.

The Chair suggested that the Active Travel team notify local members when they are at a school so the local member can engage with the team and school.

The Chair noted that the civil parking officers would be limited in their power with displaced vehicles because they only had power in specific areas.  Emily Brough stated that parking was down to changing behaviour and the vehicle patrol would have a knock-on effect. The Education team were already doing a lot of other schemes to change behaviour too. The vehicles would cover all borough and districts.

David Ayton-Hill added that they would monitor displacement and if it caused problems in a specific areas then other restrictions could be brought in.

In response to Councillor Fradgley, Emily Brough said that most the maps for the keep clear zones were correct, but they lacked time plates.

Following a supplementary from Councillor Fradgley, Emily Brough said that they did surveys on site to make sure they do not add excessive ‘street furniture’ and enforcement could be personalised to schools. 

In response to Councillor Sinclair, Emily Brough stated that school keep clear zones were historic and regulations changed with them so there had to be a specific distance. 

Following a question from the Chair, Emily Brough said that one vehicle could monitor several schools in one area in a day. It stores that data and is sent back to base and a qualified parking officer will be able to look through it all and process any contraventions that occurred. This will double up the coverage for those schools. People patrols can also be done with a second person in the vehicle to monitor people parked on double yellow lines.