A DANGEROUS drop kerb crossing outside a Chippenham primary school, where several children have nearly been run over, will be reviewed after nearly 250 parents signed a petition for a zebra crossing.

Parent Emma O’Regan launched the petition last summer after her eight-year-old daughter Natasha was nearly hit by a car outside Queen’s Crescent School.

Chippenham Town Council has since agreed to fund 25 per cent of a new feasibility report after resident and parent Mrs O’Regan, of Heron Close, made an impassioned plea at the planning, environment and transport committee meeting last Thursday.

“It is in quite a busy area for traffic and my daughter had a near miss last year,” she said.

“It really made me take a step back and when I spoke to friends, it became apparent that I wasn’t the only one who had fears about the crossing.

“We were heading to the summer fair and went to cross the road but a bus stopped at the crossing to turn right.

“Natasha was ready to go but as she stepped out, a car came flying over and I just managed to grab her in time. It really shook me up.

“There was another incident a few weeks back when someone else nearly got clobbered – it’s so dangerous.

“We managed to get 246 signatures in such a short time but this doesn’t just affect children. I imagine we would have got more had we gone door-to-door.”

Councillors at the planning meeting on Thursday agreed to fund 25 per cent of a new feasibility report to help assess the safety of pedestrians in the area and the need for a crossing.

The last report, which was compiled in 2011, concluded that a zebra crossing was “not considered an appropriate solution”.

However, Councillor Ashley O’Neill, who is also a governor for Queen’s Crescent School, welcomed the town council’s assistance.

He said: “I’m really pleased that Chippenham Town Council has agreed to support the undertaking of an up-to-date feasibility study by Wiltshire Council, which will determine whether we meet the requirements for formal zebra crossings.

“I raised this issue with Wiltshire Council due to the number of near-misses that have been occurring at the current informal crossings, in part because of confusion about who has right of way.

“Queen’s Crescent is a particularly busy residential area and traffic levels have gone up in recent years, so now seems like a sensible time to be looking at this again and hopefully we can get formal zebra crossings on both sides of the crescent.”