A120 roundabout plan aims to cut Avanti Grange students’ 5-mile trip to sports fields
Plans have been submitted to more than halve the 5-mile (8km) round trip faced by Avanti Grange students to use the secondary school’s playing pitches.
Wickham Hall farmer David Harvey has asked East Herts Council for planning permission to add a new, fourth arm to the A120 Bishop’s Stortford North roundabout, which has already been approved but has yet to be built.
The application includes a small car park to provide spaces for four minibuses and two accessible bays. Turning space is retained for emergency and maintenance vehicles.
The roundabout was originally approved to provide southern access to the Stortford Fields housing development off the bypass.
An additional spur was then approved by Hertfordshire County Council in 2015 to provide emergency and maintenance access to the new secondary school playing fields. However, the highways authority amended the scheme and that consent lapsed.
A new application for the school and similar arrangements for an emergency/maintenance spur were given the green light by East Herts Council in 2019.
Avanti Grange opened at Newland Avenue in September 2023, and last month it was rated ‘outstanding’ across the board by Ofsted.
Its campus straddles the A120 bypass, and students must complete an 8km (5-mile) minibus trip through Wickham Hall for outdoor PE lessons on its remote pitches. The new roundabout spur would cut that journey to 1.2km (0.75 miles) each way.
The school is still waiting for a pedestrian bridge linking its main buildings to the playing fields to be constructed after the contractor, ISG, went into administration in September last year.
Should the new roundabout be delivered in advance of the footbridge, it is intended that the school should make use of the minibus parking area for PE lessons.
The delays also mean the school cannot host home sports fixtures as there is no access to the pitches for visiting teams.
The minibus parking provided in the new plans would enable matches to be held on one midweek day and Saturday or Sunday, with back-to-back games on two pitches. Home players would arrive at school as normal and access the pitches via the new footbridge.
