Motorists speeding through roadworks are putting children’s lives at risk outside a school, teachers fear.

Dove Jeffery Homes has closed off one lane heading north across the Southchurch Avenue bridge, as they replace a wall next to the road that was crumbling.

But worried teachers at Porters Grange Primary School, which has an entrance in the road, say drivers speed up to make it through the traffic lights and then come down the hill quickly, leading to several near misses.

Debbie Henley, head of the school, said: “It’s very dangerous at the moment because parents and children are crossing the road without a safe place to cross now.

“There has already been some near misses because of it.”

Children cross over to the one of the entrances to the school at the bottom of the bridge.

The school and developer have asked Southend Council if it could provide a lollipop person to shepherd the children across the road, but the authority has declined that proposal.

The developer, which is creating a four storey block of 15 social housing flats on land adjacent Southchurch Avenue, off Kenilworth Road, has had some of the site workers helping marshal over youngsters.

And the school’s teachers have taken matters into their own hands by helping out too.

Cheryl Woolf, the executive headteacher of the school, said: “When people are coming up the road from the Kursaal they can see the lights are green, they speed up through them and over the brow of the hill, and come quickly down the hill where the entrance to the school is.

“Our concern is it has made it unsafe for children, particularly those who walk to school on their own.

“On the first day it happened school staff went out and helped people to cross the road.

“We don’t blame the developers at all, who have been brilliant.”

Mrs Woolf said the council suggested children cross the road at the traffic lights on the corner of Southchurch Road and Southchurch Avenue, but she says that lorries moving onto the former Essex House site, which is being converted into flats, makes that a dangerous proposition too.

Labour councillor Judith McMahon, who represents Kursaal, has been lobbying the authority on their behalf.

And Simon Gittus, who is standing for the Tories in Kursaal next May, has also asked the council why it can’t provide a temporary lollipop person.

He said: “This is putting the safety of pupils and parents at serious risk and it is only a matter of time before something bad happens down there.”

 

Development will be ready in 2017

The developer who has closed off the road says the traffic lights will stay in place until the end of January.

Dove Jeffery Homes is building a four storey block of flats, which will 15 affordable homes, on land adjacent to Southchurch Avenue, off Kilworth Avenue.

But it has had to repair the wall on the bridge after the wall became structurally insecure, but builders say the work would have had to be done anyway, regardless of their development.

The 15 flats will be completed by January 2017.

Brendan Rooney, site manager for Dove Jeffery Homes, said: The wall there has become unstable and the works would have been necessary with or without this development.

“We will have to have traffic lights down there until the end of January while the repairs are carried out, because there is considerable distance between the plot of land and the road.

“The site itself is due for completion in January 2017.”