Children and parents from Chinsenhale School in Bow took to the streets last week to protest the council’s removal of a scheme designed to keep roads around the school free of traffic during drop-off and pick-up times.
Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, ordered the removal of the School Streets traffic restrictions, with contractors arriving on Thursday morning to complete the task.
Demonstrations took place outside the school on Thursday and Friday and prevented the removal of the traffic restrictions.
Parents and children from the school were seen holding signs painted with phrases such as “save our safe space”, “stop the cars” and “safe streets for kids”.
In a tweet, Nathalie Bienfait, a Green councillor for Bow West said: “Roads are not safe for children already. The mayor is pursuing a dangerous and ideological campaign which risks tragic consequences for the borough’s children.”
The order for the removal of the scheme occurred on the same day as mayor of London Sadiq Khan announced a £69 million investment into improving air quality for children across the London boroughs, which will include more School Street schemes like the one around Chisenhale School.
The School Streets scheme had been in place since April 2021 as an experimental traffic order [ETO].
It featured barriers monitored by cameras, with timed one-hour road closures occurring at either end of the school day.
These road closures operated on five roads surrounding the school. A two-way cycle path on Chisenhale Road was also included in the scheme to eliminate through traffic use on the street.
Since its introduction, traffic barriers directly outside the school’s gates on Vivian Road have been decorated with artwork and planters made by pupils from the school, all of which will also be removed if the mayor’s plan goes ahead.
The ETO around Chisenhale School had a probation of six months, a period of time that allows a council to determine whether or not to keep a scheme in place.
As the deadline approached, the Tower Hamlets’ Public Realm team advised the mayor to allow the School Streets scheme to remain, but Rahman allowed the ETO to lapse, subsequently leaving it vulnerable to removal.
Rahman’s order would also require the removal of a play-space partly funded by local residents, as well as a two-way cycle path on Chisenhale Road also included in the scheme to eliminate through traffic use on the street.
Despite the backlash at the removal order of the scheme, it is expected that contractors will return to complete the task.
Rahman was re-elected Tower Hamlets mayor in May 2022, having been removed in 2015 by an electoral court.
His manifesto stated that he would: “Reopen our roads and abolish the failed Liveable Streets scheme”.
Although not part of the Liveable Streets scheme, it is now clear that the School Streets project was also a target for Rahman.
A statement made by the council said: “The Chisenhale primary School Street was established through an experimental traffic order… The ETO has now lapsed and the mayor has decided, in keeping with his manifesto promise to re-open roads, that the road closures will not be made permanent.”
The mayor added that the council takes the safety of children “extremely seriously” and that the council is considering alternatives to the current scheme, such as zebra crossings, school crossing patrols and traffic wardens.
I’m afraid this piece contains various inaccuracies. The scheme in question is not a ‘school street’ operated by the Council. Instead, barriers were put up around the school during Covid to allow greater space for social distancing under Covid (as occurred around many schools over this period). The parents of the school launched a crowdfunder to effectively render these permanent, by putting plant boxes down the middle of the street. The crowdfunder was promoted in terms of safety and ‘play’, but a gate was installed at either end that is now locked to the public.
So a better way of describing this is as an ‘annexation’ of public space, by the parents of the most gentrified school in Tower Hamlets. The fact that this protest has attracted so much media interest is a reflection on the cultural capital of the parents. The level of entitlement on display here is actually quite shocking. Rahman’s policies on cars are terrible, and children will suffer as a result all over Tower Hamlets. The (actual) school street scheme is worth defending wherever it’s in place. This US-style radical localism is just a force for further inequality, and an insult to the people who live near the school but don’t have access to the space that’s been annexed.
It would be nice if these parents could lend their considerable cultural and financial muscle to acting on behalf of all children in Tower Hamlets, as opposed to expanding their children’s already well-capitalised playground.