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Concrete children alert speeding drivers

Concrete statues of children are being placed outside a school in an effort to encourage passing drivers to slow down.

 
Billy Bollard - A school in Hampshire is experimenting with concrete kids as a traffic calming scheme. Children from Poulner Jnr School near Ringwood get a hepling hand from Belinda Bollard at the road side.
Poulner Junior School pupils get a hepling hand from Belinda Bollard. Photo: BNPS.co.uk

The one-metre tall models - known as Billy and Belinda Bollard - are dressed in the same blue and grey uniforms as pupils at Poulner Junior School in Ringwood.

They have been cemented to the pavement outside the Hampshire school's gates to alert speeding drivers that they have entered a built-up area.

Beverly Levett, the head teacher, said that the statues were necessary because of the school's particularly vulnerable location.

"It really made you aware that you were coming into an area where there is a school and you should slow down and take care," she said.

"We're next to a dangerous crossroads here. People come speeding down from the forest and before they know it they are in a built-up area by a school.

"Anything that we can do to raise awareness there's a school here is a good thing."

Two more of the models, which cost Hampshire County Council £300 each, have been installed outside Poulner Infant School. They are painted yellow, the colour of the infant school's uniform.

The statues are produced by Marshalls, a West Yorkshire street furniture firm. They are already in use outside schools in Southampton, where Mrs Levett previously taught.

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