NEW moves are being made to try to change the ways children travel to and from Trimley St Mary primary school.Villagers have been growing increasingly concerned about congestion outside the school's main entrance and recent measures have been carried out to restrict stopping and parking.

NEW moves are being made to try to change the ways children travel to and from Trimley St Mary primary school.

Villagers have been growing increasingly concerned about congestion outside the school's main entrance and recent measures have been carried out to restrict stopping and parking.

Now a “travel to school plan” is to be devised to look at the issue in more depth - and encourage parents and their children to find different ways to get to and from the school in High Road.

Parish council vice chairman Bryan Frost said a series of meetings had started to discuss ideas but it was early days.

There was more than £3,750 available for a plan to be put together, and there was other work outside school - such as the proposed creation of cycleways between Felixstowe and Trimley - which would help with some of the objectives.

He said recent measures to curb parking - aimed at stopping people travelling a short distance by car and persuading them to walk instead - had had some effect on congestion.

“It is still less than 100 per cent satisfactory and we need to monitor it carefully,” he said.

Council chairman Richard Kerry said the first stage of the exercise the school was a survey to see how children travelled to school and why - for example, were mums travelling by car because they were carrying on to work afterwards?

“One of the problems is that because parents can choose where they send their children to school today, around 33 per cent of the children at the school come from outside the catchment area - that's why we get so many cars,” he said.

“It is a long journey if you come from Old Felixstowe, or Langer Road or even Trimley St Martin and not a journey you would walk.

“Car sharing is not as easy now as before either and the government may have shot itself in the foot with its new car seat legislation. People will not have the right size car seats to take other people's children or be prepared to keep taking the seats in and out and putting them in other people's cars.”

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