PARISH councillors in Croxley Green are to consider spending more than £30,000 to improve children’s safety at a busy road crossing.

Councillors meeting last week discussed a proposal to upgrade the existing zebra crossing at the junction with Harvey Road and Watford Road with a pelican crossing – a more technologically advanced unit including traffic lights.

Some councillors believe the improvements would curb an alarming rise in the number of near misses at the site, when children and parents – from both Harvey Road and Rickmansworth schools – have come too close for comfort to the passing cars.

A motion by the council’s Planning and Development Committee to allocate funds in the authority’s 2009 budget is likely to follow before the full council votes through its annual funding proposals in February.

Council Clerk David Allison explained that the council would have to pay at least half of the anticipated £60,000 cost of the work – an amount estimated by Hertfordshire County Council, which is responsible for highway maintenance.

He said: “There have been some very close calls up there; a number of incidents of cars not stopping. It is felt that traffic lights would help to stop this.”

Councillors fear that these existing problems at the site will only get worse, as more vehicles and children, are drawn to the site by a new housing estate soon to be built at the bottom of Harvey Road.

Another site the council is considering for improvements is further down the road opposite the Shell petrol station, where traffic routinely snakes across the existing zebra crossing and drivers’ vision in impaired by the brow of a hill.

A funding proposal for this, however, will not be made until an ongoing planning application by Tesco – to build an Express convenience store next door – is resolved.

It is likely that, if the application is passed, Three Rivers District Council will use planning laws to demand the company pays for any safety improvements under what is known as a Section 106 agreement.

Mr Allison added that consultations with the county council were ongoing and said nothing could be decided until next year.