THE headteacher of a school near a road where several people have died recently has welcomed news that the county council is taking it over.

In December, four teenagers were killed in a car crash on the A449 Worcester to Kidderminster road.

Joanne Bibby, aged 17, of Warndon, Stephanie Goodall, 16, of Burleigh Road, Dines Green, both Worcester, and Kyle Gadsby, 18, of Valley Way and Martyn Pickering, 18, of Little Hill, both Droitwich, were killed when a car they were travelling in hit a tree.

On Sunday, July 1, the Highways Agency will hand the A449 and the A456 Tenbury Wells to Kidderminster road to Worcestershire County Council - a process known as detrunking.

Jim Turner, of King's Hawford School, which lies just off the A449, has been campaigning for a review of road safety and speed along the Ombersley to Claines stretch of the road.

He said: "We have a 2,000-signature petition to reduce the speed limit and review safety which we are going to present to Worcestershire County Council."

"I just feel that detrunking the road and moving it to Worcestershire County Council will be a really good thing because we will then have local accountability in relation to this road."

He said county councillors were more likely to understand concerns raised than the Highways Agency - an executive agency for the Department of Transport that manages, maintains and improves motorways and trunk roads.

A Highways Agency spokeswoman said that because of the close proximity of the M5, the A449 and A456 were no longer deemed strategic long-distance routes', the definition of a trunk road.

"It's more sensible in these cases for the people at a more local authority level to understand the importance of those roads in a local context rather than a national one," she said.

She said that despite the recent fatal accidents on the A449, strategically it was not considered a "particularly dangerous road".

A county council spokesman said: "We would want to undertake our own survey so that we could see what issues there were and if any decision was needed."

He said this would include investigating traffic speed, road condition, engineering works and entry and exit points.

The roads were identified in a 1998 Government white paper, A New Deal For Transport: Better For Everyone, which earmarked routes across the country for detrunking.

The Secretary of State decided they would be "more appropriately managed by the local highways authorities to enable decisions to be taken locally and to be better integrated with local transport and land use planning issues".