PUPILS from a Cinderford primary school joined the police to check traffic speeds on a local road.

The Year Five pupils from St White’s Primary School worked with Police Community Support Officers (PCSO) Taryn Yiollaris and Tobie Van Arkle.

Taryn, who is a PCSO in Mitcheldean and Drybrook, and Tobie, who is based in Cinderford, showed the speed detection camera to children in Woodpecker class.

The 28 pupils each tried out the camera on traffic travelling along St White’s Road near its junction with Buckshaft Road.

To register the speed, the children had to focus a dot in the viewfinder precisely on the vehicle’s registration plate.

A note was also made of traffic travelling too fast and PCSO Yiollaris explained the drivers would receive a notice telling them they were travelling in excess of the speed limit.

The visit of the PCSOs came as a result of a writing project the 28 children in the class have been doing on road safety.

Class teacher Lauren Marshall said: “.So far this academic year, we have written to our local PCSOs to ask for advice and information about road safety, organised and led a whole school walk to promote road safety at our school and created and presented ‘mini assemblies’ to each of the other classes at St. White’s.

On Friday (January January 12), two PCSOs came to school. They took the children out on to St White’s road to conduct speed checks and also had a general discussion with the children about what they do and how they support local communities with road safety.

“The children are going to be producing their own newspaper reports on what they discovered during the speed checks.”

One of the pupils, Evie-May said: “We went outside onto St White’s Road and we used a speed camera to test the speed of cars.

“The fastest was 37mph.

“It was fun but it was difficult to because you had to get the camera right on the number plate.

“It’s really important that people keep to the speed limit.”