Proposals for a new traffic system in and around a Douglas school may have to go back to the drawing board after neighbours vented their anger at a public meeting.

Highways chiefs were castigated not only for a lack of consultation over the plan, which would see cars leaving Ballakermeen High School via exits onto Westbourne Drive as well as a nearby narrow lane but accused of failing to address serious concerns about motorists using another road, parallel to the school field, as a short cut between major arterial routes into Douglas.

Ballakermeen head teacher Adrienne Burnett and DoI head of highways and asset management Tim Cowin both pledged afterwards to take on board the views of residents, which were aired forcefully in a packed All Saints’ Church hall.

Mr Cowin has since put in a request to planners to move the deadline given for public responses to the application, which was originally given as last Friday, until September 20. Douglas Council has also requested more time.

At the end of a stormy meeting that lasted 90 minutes, Mr Cowin told the Examiner: ’We will listen to the comments and we will decide what is best and what is appropriate.

’We are not going to push this through at any cost.’

Mrs Burnett said further discussions would take place.

’We will always sit down and talk because we want to be good neighbours,’ she said.

The application itself is to create a one-way system for traffic inside the school grounds.

’Vehicles would continue to enter through the current gateway at the bottom of Westminster Drive, next to the sports hall.

Safety

But in addition to the current exit at St Catherine’s Drive, further vehicle exits would be created through a barrier gateway at the top of Westbourne Drive and another exit onto a lane at the back of Westminster Terrace.

Effectively all vehicles all vehicles that turned left into the road that runs between the school building and the playing fields - the vast majority, except buses - would have to leave via one of the latter two exits.

Mrs Burnett told the meeting that a one-way system was needed for pupil safety within the grounds.

There were numerous exits from the school building itself leading onto areas where vehicles travelled.

’Students all pile out and all they are thinking about is meeting their mates,’ she said. That was causing a traffic hazard that had to be addressed.

Next month, she said, there would be 1,700 students on the school roll, with approximately 200 staff.

But residents were furious at what they perceived to be a lack of consideration for the knock-on effect.

They argued that the problem would just be pushed onto the surrounding roads.

Much or their anger was directed at the DoI, claiming it had ignored repeated calls for safety measures in the roads outside the school.

Many claimed it would take a serious accident or a fatality for the DoI to act.

Their annoyance was not eased when Mr Cowin confirmed that the St Catherine’s Drive/Hawarden Avenue stretch of highway, including the junction with Westbourne Drive, was not in the top 33 areas targeted as needing road safety measures such as 20mph speed limits, meaning it could be two years before similar traffic calming measures were introduced.

The road is used regularly by motorists as a short cut between Peel Road and Woodbourne Road and householders lined up to complain about dangerous speeds.

Speeds

Those living near the proposed new vehicle exits said that while the disturbance from extra traffic was an annoyance, their greatest concern was cars would be leaving along routes that the children use to depart the school on foot, along with the junctions to which the cars would be directed.

A number of Douglas councillors attended the meeting.

Among them was Debbie Pitts, who said she had relatives who lived in the affected area. She reiterated fears of a serious accident and said people would know where to apportion blame in the event of an accident and someone was badly hurt

’When it is a child, these residents will have the right to come to your doorstep because they are telling you now it is a danger and they are worried about it,’ she told the DoI representatives.

’All you are doing is pouring more traffic onto the junction of Hawarden Avenue and Westbourne Drive.’

The meeting was called by Douglas Central MHK Ann Corlett who urged all residents with concerns to submit their views on the application (1900825/B).