By Reader s letter
Letter
FLASHBACK: Traffic backing up on Heslington Lane after the school buses leave Fulford School. Picture: Richard Doughty Photography. New school access was always part of plan regarding the promise that Fulford School would have a new access road from Germany Beck: the original design for this extensive housing development always included a road access into the school. Ex-county councillor and ex-Fulford School governor David Ashton acknowledges this (Letters, January 30). He also takes a shot at Fulford Parish Council, which has always pressed its support for this purpose-built access. More relevant, senior school staff attended, or were copied into notes from, the many public consultations.
Many thanks to Mike Laycock for highlighting the sufferings of local residents as a result of the Fulford School bus traffic (Chance to end our traffic nightmare may be lost, January 16). We’ve long been promised eventual transfer of all school bus traffic to purpose-built access via Germany Beck. Is that promise to be denied? Headmaster Steve Lewis claims he is ‘working closely with all stakeholders’ with ‘consultation ongoing’. Local residents are acknowledged by school and council as stakeholders, yet our requests for meaningful consultation – consultation that could make a difference - have been rejected. Instead Mr Lewis’s ‘consultation’ has shrunk to including us in a questionnaire aimed at school parents, pupils and staff, who outnumber us by thousands. Its questions seem designed to elicit overwhelming support for a 20 per cent expansion in school numbers – with not one word offered to explain what it will mean on the ground, or where buses will