HAVING totally failed to solve the appalling traffic problems created by its acquisition of the former Queen Anne's School, St Peter's is about to submit a planning application to extend Westminster Road by building a new access road into the Queen Anne's School site (March 10).

While the residents of Queen Anne's Road and North Parade would no doubt heave a sigh of relief if this were to go ahead, all St Peter's would be doing is to move the problem from one part of York to another, without any attempt to produce a traffic management policy to address the root of the problem.

We well remember the outcry about the way Queen Anne's was acquired, the subsequent sale and development of St Peter's former premises in the Avenue in Clifton and the promises - now about to be broken - that school traffic would not be using either the Avenue or Westminster Road.

This outrageous proposal comes hard on the heels of the application to close the public right of way which crosses the school site and which will, hopefully, be the subject of a public inquiry.

The failure of St Peter's to produce a transport plan, which would sensibly involve using their own or contracted transport to collect pupils from designated edge of town collection points, rather than using the ubiquitous and infamous 4x4 vehicle for each pupil, is an indictment of their management systems.

Removing the problem from one place and dumping it somewhere else is not the answer.

Offering Astro-Turf pitches and new changing rooms as a sop to public opinion fools nobody.

Who do they take us for?

Philip Crowe,

Clifton,

York.

Updated: 09:39 Friday, March 11, 2005