A CHILD was nearly knocked over outside a school - just a month after its lollipop lady retired.
Emma Currie, a parent governor at Heather Garth Primary, said: "We did have a near miss when a year 5 pupil was nearly hit by a car driving too fast and I'm told this wasn't an isolated incident.
"The road directly outside the school gate is terribly chaotic from about 2.50pm. We have parents parking on the school zig-zags in the no stop zones, sometimes right up to the gate.
"There's double parking, parking around junctions and even cars parking totally on the pavement next to the crossing. It all gets a bit crazy at the end of school."
The school has been without a crossing patrol since the last person retired and the road outside the school on Billingley View is not deemed dangerous enough to warrant any special traffic safety measures to be introduced.
The council is providing some assistance in the form of their parking enforcement car patrolling the area but Emma says its presence was too premature and had left by the time the traffic worsened.
Parents are now more concerned at the absence of a lollipop lady that they won't let their children walk home and instead come in their cars and increase the volume of traffic around the area, she said.
The council have promised to provide in-school road safety training to the pupils but Emma, who has two children at the school, says parents could themselves make it safer.
"There's no possibility of the school getting a new crossing patrol so it's now a case of working with the council, school and parents to improve safety outside of school."
