Stoke-on-Trent City Council painted a 'School Keep Clear' sign on Greendock Street in Longton last week, even though no school has operated there since Edensor Technology College closed in 2011. The council, which faces a £6.3 million deficit for the 2025-26 financial year, has apologised and said it will review what went wrong. Residents, including 72-year-old former landlord Ali Hassan, worry they may receive parking tickets outside their own homes,though the council says no tickets will be issued for parking on the sign.

The £6.3m deficit and a sign that nobody needed

Stoke-on-Trent City Council's financial shortfall, which grew from £4.1 million in the previous quarterly report, is a central part of this story. According to the original report, the overspend was driven largely by the high cost of children in care. Yet the council still allocated resources to paint a 'School Keep Clear' marking on a street where the school building had been demolished and replaced with 193 houses last year. Residents have questioned why taxpayer money was spent on a sign that serves no purpose, and who will now pay to fix it.

A school that vanished 15 years ago — and 193 houses that replaced it

Edensor Technology College merged with another secondary school two and a half miles away and closed its Greendock Street building in 2011. The site was cleared, and the football and rugby pitches were replaced by new homes. mr Hassan told the reporter that the property no longer resembles a school, and the demolition should have been obvious to anyone checking records. The report notes that the council's error suggests a breakdown in basic verification: a simple look at the street view or council planning records would have shown the school is gone.

An 'S' painted upside down and a black wash that didn't work

The blunder was further compounded by execution. Workmen painted the letter 'S' in 'School' upside down, according to local residents cited in the original article. After the error was flagged, the council applied a black substancce over the markings, but the yellow lettering is still visible . Jane Ashworth, Labour leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council, called the work 'a mess' and said she was 'embarrassed' by the mistake. The partial cover-up adds a layer of farce to what is fundamentally a waste of public funds.

Who pays, and how did the system fail? Residents demand answers

The open question that hangs over this story is accountability. Residents want to know how much the sign and its removal will cost, and which department authorised the painting. The Taxpayers Alliance's Benjamin Elks, quoted in the original report, called it 'exactly the kind of wasteful bureaucratic blunnder that leaves residents tearing their hair out.' Council leader Ashworth has promised a review and said no parking tickets will be issued, but she has not yet explained how the error passed through what should have been multiple checks. The review must address not just the symptom — a misplaced sign — but the systemic lack of coordination between street works, school records, and financial oversight .