Open Letter to Bromley Council on Road Safety, 11 July 2023

Graph showing the number of traffic-free school streets in London boroughs, 2023

To Bromley Council leader Cllr Colin Smith and Portfolio Holder for Transport Cllr Nicholas Bennett,

Today sees the launch of the 2023 Healthy Streets Scorecard, the fifth annual release by the London Healthy Streets Coalition – a group of health, environment and transport campaigners. The media release associated with the scorecard mentions Bromley as one of the boroughs where further action is needed (1). London Borough of Bromley:

  • Is one of three London boroughs with less than 10% of appropriate streets covered by a 20mph speed limit
  • Is bottom of the table for parking controls, controlling parking on fewer than 10% of streets
  • Is named in the media release as having little or no priority for buses, in contrast to many boroughs with 40 to 50% of routes prioritised for buses (with bus lanes or similar)

The Bromley results conclude with the statement that “without serious ambition from the council, Bromley will continue to languish at the bottom end of the Scorecard” (2).

The Healthy Streets Scorecard shows to what extent London Boroughs are putting in place six key measures which will dramatically improve air quality and road safety, boost active lifestyles and reduce carbon emissions (3). Bromley Council’s Portfolio Holder for Transport, Councillor Nicholas Bennett, has recently stated publicly that “Bromley does not recognise the value of most measures included in the Healthy Streets Scorecard” (4).

We are publishing this open letter to encourage a large, broad and diverse range of Bromley stakeholders to come together to collectively ask Cllrs Smith and Bennett two questions:

  1. If Bromley residents establish an independent road safety forum as a broad, diverse, inclusive body to replace the Council’s Road Safety Panel which Cllr Bennett disbanded (5), will you engage with this body?
  2. Why does Bromley Council not see value in many of the measures included in the Healthy Streets Scorecard?

To Bromley Council leader Cllr Colin Smith and Portfolio Holder for Transport Cllr Nicholas Bennett,

Today sees the launch of the 2023 Healthy Streets Scorecard, the fifth annual release by the London Healthy Streets Coalition – a group of health, environment and transport campaigners. The media release associated with the scorecard mentions Bromley as one of the boroughs where further action is needed (1). London Borough of Bromley

  • is one of three London boroughs with less than 10% of appropriate streets covered by a 20mph speed limit
  • is bottom of the table for parking controls, controlling parking on fewer than 10% of streets
  • is named in the media release as having little or no priority for buses, in contrast to many boroughs with 40 to 50% of routes prioritised for buses (with bus lanes or similar)

The Bromley results conclude with the statement that “without serious ambition from the council, Bromley will continue to languish at the bottom end of the Scorecard” (2).

The Healthy Streets Scorecard shows to what extent London Boroughs are putting in place six key measures which will dramatically improve air quality and road safety, boost active lifestyles and reduce carbon emissions (3). Bromley Council’s Portfolio Holder for Transport, Councillor Nicholas Bennett, has recently stated publicly that “Bromley does not recognise the value of most measures included in the Healthy Streets Scorecard” (4).

We are publishing this open letter to encourage a large, broad and diverse range of Bromley stakeholders to come together to collectively ask Cllrs Smith and Bennett two questions:

  1. If Bromley residents establish an independent road safety forum as a broad, diverse, inclusive body to replace the Council’s Road Safety Panel which Cllr Bennett disbanded (5), will you engage with this body?
  2. Why does Bromley Council not see value in many of the measures included in the Healthy Streets Scorecard?

We would be grateful if Cllrs Smith and Bennett could please indicate their response to these questions in a public statement, circulated on social media channels.

We are asking these questions because we would like to work collaboratively with Bromley Council to improve Bromley’s streets for all road users. We see something collaborative like this forum as a space where new solutions could be discussed and support for planned improvements could be strengthened.

References:
1. 2023 Healthy Streets Scorecard media release
2. 2023 Healthy Streets Scorecard results for London Borough of Bromley
3. Healthy Streets Scorecard indicators explained 
4. Bennett’s responses to public written questions at last Environment Committee 
5. Copy of letter announcing closure of Bromley Council’s Road Safety Panel in 2022

Signed,

  1. Bromley Living Streets
  2. Bromley Cyclists

Details of how to sign this letter:

If you lead a community organisation, business, school, church or faith-based group and would like to add your organisation’s name to the letter, please email us at bromleygroup AT livingstreets.org.uk

If you would like to add your name to the letter as an individual, please click the link below to sign the letter via openletter.earth. We are using an external platform for individual signatures to ensure that GDPR privacy regulations are adhered to:

https://openletter.earth/open-letter-to-bromley-council-on-road-safety-1dec9a0a

Please note – the platform will send you a confirmation email to validate your email address, check your spam folder if this doesn’t appear in your Inbox.

Please consider sharing this letter on social media to spread the word to other residents, businesses and community organisations.

Public questions – Bromley Council Environment Committee Special Meeting, Call in: Review of School Streets, 15 July 2022

Questions from the Public for Written Response:

1) Can the committee explain its decision not to support School Streets given that the main issues seemed to be a small group of complaints and some associated costs which could potentially be met elsewhere? Bromley currently has 6 school streets identified (https://www.bromley.gov.uk/cycling-walking-school/school-streets) for 82 primary schools. Our neighbours in Croydon have 14 permanent and 21 under consideration across 72 primary schools.
Why is Bromley unable to support this if other boroughs can?
What other measure for our children does the council intend to take that focus on hub areas like schools rather than borough wide initiatives?

Continue reading “Public questions – Bromley Council Environment Committee Special Meeting, Call in: Review of School Streets, 15 July 2022”

School Streets Showdown in Bromley

A special meeting of Bromley Council’s Environment Committee will be held at 9am on Friday 15 July 2022. This meeting has one agenda item: the future of School Streets in London Borough of Bromley. If you’re a Bromley resident, do this now:

  1. Send an email to committee.services@bromley.gov.uk, including a 50 word question on School Streets (see below for more ideas about questions to ask), and explain your question is for the Environment Committee meeting on Friday 15 July. Questions must be received by 5pm on Monday 11 July.
  2. Write to your councillors (your elected representatives in local government) today to ask them why Bromley came 27th out of 33 London Boroughs in the 2022 Healthy Streets Scorecard (published on 5 July 2022), and what they intend to do about it. If one of your councillors is Cllr Thomas Turrell (councillor for Hayes and Coney Hall), you might want to ask him why he didn’t voice his support for Hayes Primary School Street at the Environment Committee meeting on 21 June, given that this School Street is in his ward, and he was present at the meeting.
  3. If you’re free 9am til 10am on Friday 15 July, fill out this form to register to attend the Environment Committee meeting on School Streets. We’ll see you there.

Why now?

At the Environment meeting on 21 June, a fractious debate took place over the council’s review of School Streets. On 24 June, Cllr Nicholas Bennett (Portfolio Holder for Transport) decided Bromley Council will not actively roll out School Streets in the borough. The following Friday (1 July), Bromley Labour and Bromley Liberal Democrats both independently “called in” this decision. This means the decision goes back to the Environment Committee to reconsider. This is happening on Friday 15 July, and that’s why we hope as many Bromley residents as possible will submit questions to this meeting or attend it in person.

What happens at a call in?

A “call in” meeting revisits a decision made by Bromley Council. Historically, call in meetings in Bromley provide a valuable opportunity to show the strength of feeling on an issue. For example, the call in meeting on the decision to relocate Beckenham Library took place during working hours on a weekday, but the public gallery was packed.

It is worth noting that it is not only opposition parties who call in decisions. For example, Bromley Conservative councillors previously called in a decision on the Crofton Road cycle way.

What is a School Street?

You can find out more by clicking one of these links:

Bromley Living Streets’ briefing on school streets

Mums for lungs

Living Streets

http://schoolstreets.org.uk/

Questions that can be submitted by residents to the call in meeting

  1. ANPR camera enforcement is used for all School Streets in Islington (where 49% of schools have School Streets), Hackney (45%), and Bromley’s neighbour Lewisham. Bromley hasn’t trialled ANPR for School Streets, on grounds of cost, but elsewhere ANPR cameras generate revenue. Will Bromley Council now trial ANPR for School Streets?
  2. Bromley has the highest % of trips made by car in the whole of London at 53%, and a target within the Mayor’s Transport Strategy to reduce this to 40%. Given the School Streets decision, can the Portfolio Holder now provide an indication of how this target will be reached?

Now the elections are over, what next for safer walking and cycling in Bromley?

The local elections brought in a number of new councillors to represent wards across Bromley. As shown below, the main changes were Liberal Democrat councillors in Beckenham Town & Copers Cope and Bromley Town, Labour councillors in Plaistow and St Mary Cray, and the independent party Chislehurst Matters in Chislehurst. Bromley remains Conservative-controlled with a majority of 14 councillors. Many wards that remained Conservative also had new ward councillors selected. 

What does this mean for ongoing community-led efforts to improve the safety and liveability of our streets? The good news is that many new councillors take a supportive stance on safer streets, air pollution, encouraging walking and cycling, and climate change. Moreover, the range of councillors elected promises vibrant debate on many topics.

CLEAN AIR
Bromley Liberal Democrats supported Mums for Lungs election pledges, which included a call for a clean air cabinet member, a diesel-free borough by 2030, advocacy to phase out wood burning and the goal of delivering a School Street at every school by 2025 (with an alternative package of road safety measures where temporary road closures are not feasible).

SUPPORT FOR CYCLING
Bromley Liberal Democrats, Bromley Labour, Bromley Greens and Chislehurst Matters all supported Bromley Cyclists’ call for the development and implementation of an active travel strategy designed to increase the cycling trip share in Bromley from 1.8% to 5% by 2026/7. While the Conservatives did not provide a formal endorsement, Councillor Michael Tickner (Beckenham Town & Copers Cope ward) crucially acknowledged by email that: “safe cycle-friendly infrastructure has to be provided first in order for more people to take up cycling, not the other way round”. 

CLIMATE ACTION
Bromley Liberal Democrats, Bromley Labour and Bromley Green Party supported a coalition of community and faith-based groups calling for Bromley Council to declare a climate emergency and produce a plan to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for all activities across the borough. Climate action, active travel and road safety are tightly-linked issues as reaching net-zero will require a large shift towards walking, cycling and public transport use in Bromley.

In addition to this, all parties covered issues related to air quality, safer streets and more support for walking and cycling for all, such as the lack of a safe crossing at Chislehurst War Memorial, the lack of safe crossings on South Eden Park Road, and concerns over safety raised in the 2020 School Travel Survey conducted by Bromley Living Streets.

So what changes can we expect to see, and how can local communities support all ward councillors to give Bromley residents more sustainable travel choices and cleaner air? In this blog post we set out four priorities for change and four things that you can do to support councillors.

FOUR PRIORITIES FOR ACTION

1. Safe pedestrian crossings
Local centres across Bromley should have pedestrian crossings – either zebra or signalised crossings – to create safe walking routes to local parks, schools, high streets, and public facilities. These routes should be provided pro-actively, instead of waiting for a minimum number of casualties to justify a crossing at any given location.

2. A cycle network
Bromley lacks a joined-up network of separated cycle lanes across the borough, which is a major barrier to cycling for many residents. A network of protected cycle lanes connecting local centres across the borough will make it safer to switch to cycling as a low-cost travel option that reduces air pollution, congestion, and increases daily exercise.

3. Measures to reduce speeding
Until now Bromley Council has only taken limited action on speeding, often deferring responsibility to the Metropolitan Police and installing advisory warning signs that make only minimal difference to driver behaviour. Traffic calming measures should be introduced to reduce vehicle speeds and improve road safety.

4. School Streets
A School Street is a temporary restriction on motor vehicle traffic outside schools during drop-off and pick-up hours, to improve air quality and traffic safety at the school gate, and encourage parents to walk or cycle instead of driving. Over 500 School Streets have been introduced in London, mostly since the start of the pandemic. Bromley Council received funding from TfL for 11 School Streets but only six have been implemented so far.

FOUR WAYS TO ACTIVELY SUPPORT CHANGE

1. Make your voice heard
Your ward councillors are accountable to you, and you can write to them to ask for stronger action to make it safer to walk and cycle locally. Walking and cycling schemes can be sensitive when they impact things like on-street parking or right-of-way for drivers, so it’s important that councillors hear from those supporting change. You can copy your local residents’ association and Bromley Living Streets in on correspondence with councillors. Additionally, you can submit questions to Bromley Council to raise concerns at its Environment Committee public meeting. You can also subscribe to newsletters from Bromley Living Streets to stay up to date.

2. Start small
Alongside campaigns calling for safer streets, we can also push for change by working with the organisations and groups to which we are already connected. Reach out to your child’s school to ask about setting up a School Street, or work with your local church, faith group, community organisation or sports club to encourage and enable people to walk, cycle or take public transport to meetings or activities where possible.

3. Leadership from community and business organisations
Many organisations are reluctant to take openly political positions, however, this doesn’t mean you cannot give general support to measures that would improve road safety, air quality, and enable active travel. Moreover, as a key local stakeholder you could also contribute to shape how new schemes are designed and implemented to ensure that they meet local needs. For businesses this also makes good financial sense: more walkable streets are important to the local economy, pedestrians and cyclists spend 40% more in local shops than those travelling by car, and unsafe levels of air pollution are beginning to have a negative impact on property values.

4. Don’t give up!
Unfortunately, these changes won’t happen overnight. Continued support is needed from residents to encourage councillors to support safer streets, and hold them to account if they don’t deliver on their commitments.

New Year, New Environment Committee Meeting!

Happy New Year! Can you spare 5 minutes today to send a question to Bromley Council Environment Committee? There’s no time to lose: questions need to be submitted by 5pm on 5 January to be accepted for the committee meeting on 19 January – full details of how to submit questions can be found here, and information about the meeting can be found here

Bromley Council’s Environment and Community Services PDS Committee examines executive decisions and reviews policy on transport (highways development, traffic, road safety and parking), street services, waste and recycling and parks and open spaces. We in Bromley Living Streets think that asking questions to the Environment Committee is a very valuable way to let the Council know what matters to local people – particularly important to do now, given that local elections are taking place on 5 May 2022. Environment Committee meetings are the place where Bromley Council’s projects and policies are scrutinised, and members of the public raising issues in this forum is an important part of local democracy and a key way of encouraging local councillors to take action.

So what should you ask questions about? That’s up to you, but we have some ideas you might want to consider. Below we present some ideas for questions relating to active travel and safe streets across the borough, including pedestrian crossings, air pollution, school streets, speed limits, Killed or Seriously Injured (KSI) statistics and COP26. We also encourage you to look at the Council’s Environment Matters newsletter (available here) and take this opportunity to ask the Council for clarification or evidence on the topics and claims contained in the newsletter.

Feel free to Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) us into your email when you submit your questions, or forward your submitted questions to us after sending them to committee.services@bromley.gov.uk, so that we are aware of the issues that have been raised.

Potential topics and questions:

Pedestrian crossings

  1. Bromley’s Air Quality Action Plan was approved at the November 2021 Environment Committee meeting. On the final page of Appendix A, under “Reducing emissions from transport”, it is stated that a target for the number of new pedestrian crossings will be established – when, and based on what evidence?

Air pollution

  1. Bromley’s Air Quality Action Plan (approved in November 2021) claims no schools in Bromley are exposed to NO2 concentrations that exceed annual limits (page 8). Maps available on the London Air website suggest otherwise. Please set out all the evidence, with references where appropriate, upon which this claim is made.

School Streets

  1. In July 2021, 500+ School Streets were in place across LondonBromley Council’s website states the borough has 4, but it’s now 3. Given demand from Bromley parents, and evidence of health benefits, road danger reduction, and improved independent mobility for children, will the Council commit to more trials now?
  2. What would be the cost of one ANPR vehicle to provide enforcement of Bromley School Streets, for one hour at start and finish of the school day for the entire Spring term, and could this cost be covered by the money Bromley Council received from TfL to provide School Streets?
  3. The Portfolio Holder has previously stated the three schools on Hawksbrook Lane “were very keen” to have a School Street, but this has not been installed due to “the potential number of vehicle movements which still could occur”.  Please provide the evidence base that informed this decision.

Speed limits

  1. In response to previous questions, the Portfolio Holder stated the borough’s experience is that drivers who ignore 30mph limits ignore lower speed limits, and drivers are much more likely to change behaviour where reduced speeds are advised near a clear hazard or justification. Please provide evidence to support this.
  2. In a Council meeting on 6 December 2021, Councillor Tickner described 20mph speed limits as “socialist”. Does the Portfolio Holder agree with this characterisation?

Net carbon zero target

  1. The ‘COP26 Special Edition’ of Environment Matters states that “Bromley has always been London’s greenest borough and we have one of the most ambitious net carbon zero targets in the Capital.” Please set out all the evidence, with references where appropriate, upon which this claim is made.

Killed or Seriously Injured (KSI) statistics

  1. The latest edition of Environment Matters states the 28% reduction in Killed or Seriously Injured (KSI) casualties in 2020 is “perhaps partly explained” by “lockdown”. Would the Portfolio Holder agree that it is very likely that the 19% reduction in vehicle miles travelled in the borough is a factor? (19% figure calculated using DfT statistics from 2019 and 2020, available here)

Please do get in touch with any questions, suggestions, feedback, or if you’d like us to put you in touch with other Bromley Living Streets members living in your neighbourhood.

Best wishes for the New Year from Bromley Living Streets

Graffiti on a tree in Church House Gardens, Bromley. Photo by Brendan.

Air pollution and safety around Bromley schools

Ruben de Rijcke, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This report by Bromley Living Streets presents key data on air pollution and safety around Bromley schools, and presents ideas for how Bromley residents can take action to improve their neighbourhood between now and the May 2022 local elections.

Continue reading “Air pollution and safety around Bromley schools”

Public questions – Bromley Council Environment Committee, 9 September 2020

Questions from the Public for Written Response:

1) RVR members have been very concerned for many years at the excess traffic exiting Station Road at Shortlands traffic lights making the junction very dangerous for pedestrians. What is the situation regarding the proposal for a modal filter in Glass Mill Lane?

Continue reading “Public questions – Bromley Council Environment Committee, 9 September 2020”

Public questions – Bromley Council Environment Committee, 17 November 2020

Questions from the Public for Written Response:

1) The School Street for Hayes Primary unfortunately did not go ahead. To reduce traffic, improve safety in George Lane and promote active travel in line with Government and TfL guidelines will the council commit to maintenance and improvement of Rookery Lane so that it’s a usable route all year round?

Continue reading “Public questions – Bromley Council Environment Committee, 17 November 2020”