Crumbling road outside secondary school could 'contribute to accident'

THE condition of a stretch of road outside a busy secondary school could contribute to an accident, it has been claimed.

Complaints have been lodged about the rutted state of Cricketfield Road which runs past Torquay Academy, in particular the cracking, crumbling braking strip by the zebra crossing.

It comes as Torbay Council has agreed to move £1.5million from its roads repairs grant to other building projects and spend £40,000 on widening an existing path.

Local resident Susie Colley, who is also chairman of Torre and Upton Community Partnership, said: "I am sure it is a lot to do with the weather. The whole road is not good from Teignmouth Road upwards. The braking strip outside the school is simply breaking up.

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"It precedes a zebra crossing and with the surface being so dangerous, in the wet and icy weather, this is a tragedy waiting to happen.

"I complained about this in January. I find it unbelievable that £40,000 can be spent on widening and resurfacing a path to Torre Abbey, but a piece of road on which children could be killed due to the bad surface is just left until someone shouts or a child is killed as a result of a car being unable to brake on the poor surface."

She also cited the Torbay Council decision to spend 30 per cent of the Government Grant for Roads Maintenance — £1.5million — elsewhere in its building budget.

The full council rejected a Lib Dem move to put £500,000 back in the road repairs budget.

Gill Battye, head teacher at Torquay Academy, said they had also requested a pelican crossing with lights outside the school, both on Barton Hill Road and Cricketfield Road, if only to work at peak times. She said: "They came and did a bit of a scheme a couple of years ago but it took us a while to get the yellow zig-zag lines. But the surface is crumbling.

"Trees have been taken down now so visibility is clearer.

"We have one or two near misses on the zebra crossing and people haven't stopped. It is very dangerous. The police are trying to make sure people don't double park but it needs a lot more signage and traffic control.

"It should be a 20mph limit, even less than that but it has got to be sign-posted and there has to be some penalty if people don't keep to it.

"They did a survey of the road for the pelican crossing during the day but said it wasn't busy enough to justify it. But this is for peak times, that would help Torre School as well."

A Torbay Council spokesman said: "The whole length of Cricketfield Road has been identified as requiring resurfacing.

"This work may possibly be carried out during the next financial year but this will depend on funding being available from the highways maintenance budget.

"The anti-skid surfacing would be reinstated as part of this scheme.

"There is a zebra crossing in Cricketfield Road.

"Barton Hill Road also has a zebra crossing, with the addition of a school crossing patrol at school times."