Many thanks to Mike Laycock for highlighting the sufferings of local residents as a result of the Fulford School bus traffic (Chance to end our traffic nightmare may be lost, January 16).

We’ve long been promised eventual transfer of all school bus traffic to purpose-built access via Germany Beck. Is that promise to be denied?

Headmaster Steve Lewis claims he is ‘working closely with all stakeholders’ with ‘consultation ongoing’. Local residents are acknowledged by school and council as stakeholders, yet our requests for meaningful consultation – consultation that could make a difference - have been rejected.

Instead Mr Lewis’s ‘consultation’ has shrunk to including us in a questionnaire aimed at school parents, pupils and staff, who outnumber us by thousands. Its questions seem designed to elicit overwhelming support for a 20 per cent expansion in school numbers – with not one word offered to explain what it will mean on the ground, or where buses will go.

Having earlier rebuffed our detailed four-page letter of suggestions, Mr Lewis now invites them in a six inch by two inch box.

This is not consultation but a PR exercise, as much use to us as a well-aimed kick in the teeth. We deserve much better, and we’ll fight to get it.

John Heawood, Eastward Avenue, Fulford, York

Fulford School road a wasted opportunity

I write in full support of the Fulfordgate residents’ anguish over the school buses route and other traffic (‘Chance to end our traffic nightmare may be lost’, January 16).

That this situation has arisen is regrettable, avoidable and yet so predictable.

Senior officials and councillors from City of York Council, together with Persimmon representatives, all so keen to get the Germany Beck housing plans through, attended public meetings. As part of ‘community gain’, the new access road was presented as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity for school buses. We were told it would reduce the high peak-time traffic volumes and also reduce the excessive air pollution on Fulford Main Street, Heslington Lane and these residents’ homes, Some current councillors should be able to recall this. When so much emphasis is given to other areas of York by the Lib Dem/Green Party coalition to reduce these same elements, why isn’t this opportunity being taken for Fulford?

Alan Smith, Fordlands Road, York