CONCERNED parents and teachers are calling for a rural road to be gritted to prevent the lane outside Rathmell Primary School becoming an ice rink.

A number of, luckily minor, accidents occurred recently with vehicles skidding on the untreated road as children walked to school.

Now the school and arish council are calling for Hesley Lane to be gritted by North Yorkshire County Council.

Headteacher Sarah Hudson told the Herald: "It was a very difficult morning.

"There is no pavement for parents and children to walk on and with the school being on a hill it is a concern regarding school safety."

The PTA has contacted the highways authority to see if the rural road could be included on the gritting route.

At a recent parish council meeting, members heard that three vehicles, including the school bus, had skidded on the icy road after children had been dropped off.

Clarice Howorth, clerk of Ribble Banks Parish Council, which covers Rathmell, said she had written to the highways authority asking that the lane be gritted to prevent it becoming so slippery.

Craven's divisional highways engineer Richard Marr told the Herald he had received numerous complaints about the icy conditions of the road and would be taking up the issue with County Hall.

He said: "The road is a priority 3 road which means that it won't normally receive treatment unless the conditions have lasted for 72 hours. However I will be bringing this case to the attention of the people who review the priority network each autumn and look at extra requests.

"The priority system was established according to the quantity of vehicles using the road as we want to try and help as many people as possible but it doesn't take account of who lives on the road or what the premises are, such as doctor's surgeries, schools or hospitals.

"We do put a pile of salt on the road to Rathmell School but that had been used up before this incident occurred and we hadn't had time to replace it.

" We will look and see if it can be made a priority 2 route but we can't just keep adding to this service. The problem is that as you add one thing something drops off at the other end but we design the routes as best we can."

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