Our County Council, which is telling everyone it has to make big service cuts because of central government funding reductions, has decided, in its wisdom, to spend nearly a million pounds of taxpayers’ money on signage for 20mph zones outside 66 selected schools, and this includes two in Newton Aycliffe: St Mary’s and Sugar Hill. St Mary’s is the one on Central Avenue, which is the big wide main road through town with the wide grass verges at the side, separating the footpath from the road, and this is only phase 1 – more schools, and more expenditure, is planned to follow! To the best of my knowledge all of our schools already have
traffic wardens, but clearly that is not deemed enough to make them safe! The two schools mentioned must have both been open and deemed perfectly safe for at least 50 years, but suddenly there is a need for 20mph speed limits! It’s another case of the Nanny State gone mad. Our cash-strapped County Council has also wasted taxpayers’ money installing not one but two 30mph signs in the road surface at the entrance to town on Central Avenue from the A167 alongside the 30mph signs already there! Do they think the signs that were already there weren’t big enough! I expect they’ll be doing the same on other entry roads into town. Meanwhile, we have those seriously dangerous pinch points on Pease Way made even more dangerous by having most of the bollards smashed by obvious impact damage, probably by cars crashing into them, and very few of the reflectors in place. This means it’s very easy not to see them until the last minute. Surely this is a far bigger risk than people not seeing the previously existing 30mph sign or people getting run over near a school with a traffic warden, yet they can’t afford to fix them (or, better still, remove them). The Council seems to regard all drivers as inconsiderate,  irresponsible morons who are incapable of driving safely without intervention. Granted there are a few such people on the road, but they aren’t the people who take any notice of the signage. Meanwhile, Vane Road School still gets huge numbers of parents parking around it at chucking out time. They are presumably the ones with unfit kids, who can’t make the quarter of a mile walk home on foot! Traffic congestion seems to be a far bigger risk than having too high a speed limit, but it’s a less easy ‘fix’ and it’ll only get worse as more and more houses are allowed to be built. John Snowball