Traffic lights red alert

Saddleworth School’s new site in Diggle

RESIDENTS have branded the proposed road scheme for the controversial new £19.2million Saddleworth High School in Diggle “unworkable”.

Locals got their first look at Oldham Council’s plans yesterday at the first of two drop-in events.

They include traffic lights on a section of Huddersfield Road which will only allow vehicles to travel in one direction at a time. Pressure sensors will operate outside school hours so the lights will change to green when vehicles approach.

There will also be residents’ car parks for those living on sections of Huddersfield Road, a drop-off car park for parents, wider pavements and traffic-calming measures.

The bus stop will be moved closer to the new school. Other proposals include single or double yellow lines.

But residents who spoke to the Chronicle after seeing the plans yesterday at Kiln Green Church were not impressed. Paul Beswick, who lives in Diggle, said: “I have no real objections to the school, but I am not convinced these proposals will work or help the village in any way. “You have 350 school kids arriving by car in a very short period of time, going through a set of traffic lights 150 metres long.

“There is going to be a big build up of traffic — it’s going to cause mayhem.”

Another Diggle resident, who did not want to be named, added: “The plans look all right on paper but they just won’t work.”

Independent Saddleworth parish councillor Keith Lucas claimed the traffic lights would create a “non-paying toll-gate entrance system” and said: “I can only say if that’s all the council can come up with, why did they bother? The proposals are trying to make it as challenging as possible for parents to use their cars to deliver pupils to the proposed new Saddleworth school site.

“But I didn’t realise they meant that all Diggle residents, visitors and business vehicles will be suffering the same fate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year.

He was among those who complained that only a small section of the traffic proposals were on display.

Resident Kevin Bourke said: “The fundamental problem is there are going to be insurmountable traffic issues if they put the school there. They are desperately trying to come up with a traffic scheme, but it’s unworkable.”

Councillor Hibbert said: “All the professional advice we have had is that it’s workable. Nobody likes change. Everybody anticipates the negatives of anything new but we feel, and the highways engineers feel, this is the best solution.”

The full planning application for the highways scheme is likely to be submitted during the week commencing December 21.