These days it takes a lot to unite residents but a York street has been galvanised into action by a private school's plans to ruin their quiet road.
If you walk up Westminster Road, off Clifton Green, you cannot fail to notice that almost every house has a bright yellow poster saying, "STOP ST PETERS' ACCESS ROAD AND DEVELOPMENT".
The controversy dates back to March when residents of Westminster Road were horrified when they were told that St Peter's School wanted to construct a new access road so that hundreds of cars could deliver pupils directly to St Peter's junior school - called St Olave's. Not only that, but the school also wanted to install two ugly all-weather playing pitches surrounded by high fences and flood lights at the bottom of the road and in direct view of many residents. The plans, submitted to York Council, for these ugly structures looked more suited to a maximum security prison compared to a pretty area on the edge of a Conservation Area.
For many years St Peter's was seen as an asset to the local community with extensive playing fields on the edge of the Ouse and attractive buildings.
But, over the last year or so, St Peters has distanced itself from its neighbours. Firstly, it wants to close a popular local path on totally spurious security grounds and now it wants lazy parents to drive their noisy 4x4s down the narrow residential road, over the roots of a well loved horse chestnut tree, into a new access road. The prospect of up to 500 cars crammed into a short period six days a week has sparked howls of protests from residents. They feel especially aggrieved as St Peter's claimed that buying the site that St Olave's now uses (in 2001) would save residents from traffic problems if the alternative proposal of using the site for housing happened.
Hopefully the protests of residents plus York Council's own plans to cut 'school run' traffic by 7.7% will sway councillors to vote against the school's plans when the planning decision is considered.
Updated: 15:14 Monday, November 28, 2005
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