Council contractors may have to stay behind after class for making a bad spelling mistake in the ‘School – keep clear’ sign painted on the road outside a city primary.

Cheshire West and Chester Council is altering the street lay-out by Highfield Primary School in Blacon Point Road, Blacon, because of safety concerns.

But after apparently resurfacing the stretch of road in front of the school gate, workmen spelled ‘clear’ as ‘claer’ in the bright yellow ‘School – keep clear’ warning to drivers.  

Red-faced council officers are currently looking in to what went wrong.

Council spokeswoman Laura Johnson said: “We were made aware of the road markings mistake outside Highfield Community Primary School in Blacon as soon as the work was carried out yesterday and our contractors have been out to the site this morning to correct it.”

The mishap comes just months after council workmen painted yellow zig zag lines on the road outside a site for older people’s accommodation in Newton, believing it was still a school, even though Woodfield Primary School closed in 2008 and was later demolished.

No parking signs were mistakenly painted - and then quickly painted out again! - by the council close to the former Woodfield Primary School site on Kingsway last year
No parking signs were mistakenly painted - and then quickly painted out again! - by the council close to the former Woodfield Primary School site on Kingsway last year

Changes are taking place outside Highfield Primary to tackle traffic chaos because of several near miss incidents in which young pupils have almost been hit by vehicles.

The bus stop has  been relocated further away from the school frontage and chicanes are being replaced with flat topped road humps which can be used for crossing the road.

Problems have been particularly bad during peak times because of construction work to build Extra Care housing on the site of the former infants’ school next door but there are also traffic fears once the 65 apartments are complete.

And there is more construction work in the pipeline because the primary school is due to be rebuilt to the rear of the site.