YOUNGSTERS are being injured every year "pouring" out of a local school on to "one tiny road"- a school governor has said. It was only after one pupil ended up with a broken leg that Hampshire County Council introduced traffic calming on Mill Chase Road. Parents, governors and teachers are concerned about the 1,500 children using the road. They have worked tirelessly to produce the school travel plans, some of which have been with the county council for more than a year, and now local governor Helen Walters wants to know what will be done. Weyford Infant and Junior Schools submitted their travel plans more than a year ago and Mill Chase School submitted its plan last Easter. All three schools wanted measures to be taken to protect children pouring out onto the busy Mill Chase Road. Weyford governor and East Hampshire district councillor Helen Walters said: "1,500 children in my area are pouring onto one tiny road. Children are going to be injured on this road. It's an accident waiting to happen, if someone does not get on and do something. "My schools did their travel plans years ago. Hampshire County Council have had all three of them for a year now." Schools are encouraged to make travel plans to help the county council work out how it can help make the school journey safer. Gathering the plans involves speaking to parents and children to look at how many people walk or go by car to school and where the problems are. Dr Walters said: "There are pavements around the school, which are only wide enough for one buggy and they (children and parents) have to step out into the road. Those situations are not safe." Weyford's plan requests pavement improvements and says the crossing point needs assessing now thre is no longer a lollipop lady. It would also like to see improvements to the bridge at the back of the Weyford schools, which Mrs Walters said is "slippery and dangerous". "All those things add up to make the general area around there unsafe," she said. She said she remembers a pupil a couple of years ago suffered a broken leg because of the problem and that every academic year pupils are getting injured. "I have not been approached, and nothing seems to be happening. It seems a great shame that after all the efforts put in by the schools, there does not seem to be any response. "We should be reviewing the travel plan year after year but we can't because no progress has been made." Gwil Williams, traffic manager at EHDC, said: "The council put ins ome traffic calming measures on Mill Chase Road after a youngster was knocked down. "I think one of the issues is that there is a backlog of work on travel plans at present. It's not a problem of funding as much as a shortage of transport engineers. It's taking about 18 months to two years before anything is done. "We're a victim of our own success in East Hampshire - we have more than 30 schools in East Hampshire with school travel plans. We have been working very hard on producing those, but then there's a funnel effect and it's taking a while." He stressed EHDC wants to encourage walking to school and there is a high level of children from Weyford Schools who already walk. Phillipa Currie, senior school travel plan manager at Hampshire County Council, said: "We have run a scheme outside Weyford Infant and Junior School this summer, and taken in some of the Mill Chase travel plan. "Mill Chase's plans were submitted only this year, but we are also planning to do another scheme later on this year. She said that most schools take a year to write their travel plans and then every year there is a deadline that has to be met by schools for them to receive funding from the Department of Education. Although the county council has no deadline, there is an influx of travel plans from schools trying to meet government deadlines in order to receive extra funds. She said an estimated 80 per cent of travel plans arrive with the county council in January and March. She also stressed the council has had trouble filling the post of engineer which has slowed the process. "It has been slightly slower, but we are still spending 1.5 million a year on schools. We are not sitting on the money," she said. "Sometimes, we can get 100 travel plans in and we have to have a priority system." Liz George, the headteacher at Weyford Infants School, explained the travel plans were drawn up before she became head teacher. She said: "They have made changes on the road with the idea of calming the traffic down, but I'm not sure how successful that's been. I don't know that anything has been done to create more parking." She said what the school really needed was more car parking to cut down on congestion and hazardous parking in the morning rush. She said:"To get people out of their cars is not going to be a viable option. What we really need to do is solve the parking problem."

• East Hampshire District Council calls for action on travel plans, see page 8.