Hutton Henry is a major access route to the A19 and can see a lot of traffic pass through it. There is no safe space for children to cross the road to the nearby park, or for residents to access the church hall. Equally, at school closing time there is no suitable spaces for families to collect their children from school due to inadequate parking.
This ePetition ran from 18/03/2024 to 03/06/2024 and has now finished.
44 people signed this ePetition.
Requests for formalised crossing such as a zebra crossing or
traffic signal-controlled crossing are assessed against a national
criteria devised by the Department for Transport (DfT), which takes
into account various factors including traffic flow and the number
of pedestrians crossing the road throughout the day and not just
the busiest period. It has been proven that low pedestrian flows at
formalised crossings results in more road traffic accidents whereby
the motorist has failed to stop, therefore the reason for the DfT
guidance.
Additionally, the County Council receives more requests for
formalised crossing facilities than it is able to fund from limited
road safety budgets and as such we are required to direct available
funding towards addressing locations with the worst accident
records. Having checked the accident recording database shared with
Durham Constabulary, I can confirm no recorded ‘personal
injury’ accidents in Hutton Henry during the past 5 years,
being our standard search criteria. These figures represent a
favourable accident record compared to many other locations within
the County, where future intervention by the Council would be
beneficial to improve road safety.
In the case of Hutton Henry, the national criteria for a formal
crossing could not be satisfied, this is basically because there is
no overall “desire line” on what is a long section of
road where pedestrians choose to cross where it is convenient for
them, rather than at a specific location. In addition, and
importantly, the pedestrian and vehicular flows are significantly
too low to achieve the necessary threshold criteria to justify a
crossing.
The creation of additional off-road parking through Hutton Henry has been assessed and there are no areas of suitable land within the ownership of Durham County Council where additional parking could be created, with a great deal of the open verge areas being designated as village green. Even if the land issue could be resolved there is no central budget available so any progression would rely wholly on third party funding, such as the County Councillors AAP/Neighbourhood budget and/or the local Parish Council. Unfortunately, due to the reasons stated there is no scope at this time to progress this element of your request.
The road through Hutton Henry would not meet the criteria for a
20mph speed limit. However, we would be open to the introduction of
an advisory 20mph speed limit for the school area should 3rd party
funding, as mentioned previously, be made available.