Hi @KimD and welcome. Was a report actually published? Where can we see it? I only know the name of one person who was a member of Leo’s working group and he is also a FH Assembly Coordinator. Obviously I’m not putting his name on here as he’s not an elected and therefore public figure. The report should be in the public domain though.
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I think you have disappointed a lot of young parents with this inaccuracy. Eliot Bank is a two form entry not three as you have stated. HT has a capacity of 210 with EB having 420. EB’s site is probably 4 times the size of HT set back from the road and is an outstanding school with a feeling of space and a great reputation.
Eliot Bank has now divided the entry of children between the front entrance on Thorpewood Avenue and the back entrance on Eliot Bank. These entrances are a few hundred metres apart so the top of Thorpewood have probably half the traffic they had in the past.
Holy Trinity has two entrances about 50m apart, most drivers will still arrive via Thorpewood as it is most convenient for both. I don’t think you can say far more at present during Covid, pre-Covid it would have been more accurate but this measure is Covid related.
I think an easy way to test the theory of whether the cars will just move to the lower part of Thorpewood is just to ask the residents who live by the back entrance of EB. I think the most recent newsletter is asking them to stop parking in residents car parks.
I don’t think people see this as an EB vs HT or upper vs lower Thorpewood. I think all have equal entitlement to clean air and all should be treated equally. I don’t think it is right that you are seeking to displace pollution from one place that has high levels of traffic for 2 hours a day to another place that has high levels of traffic all day. I understand the cost argument but it shouldn’t be about making it a lot worse for some people.
You seem to be advocating benevolent dictatorship by local councillors who know best and should follow their approach as it is the correct way forward. I don’t think we residents elected you tell us the correct way without listening to us. I am grateful that in your second reply you have listened to our concerns.
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Elliot Bank was 717.86m last year. Adamsrill was 7142.25m (source).
While I don’t doubt there are needless journeys, I wouldn’t like to make assumptions about parent’s individual circumstances and situations. Having more than one child in different schools (e.g. one in primary and one in secondary), or having moved for schools or work, or just needing to drop the kids and get to work are all reasons why people may end up driving.
Primary schools are a particular problem as the children are generally too young to make their own way to school on public transport or whatever.
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But clearly they do.
It would indeed be interesting to see the ‘school travel plan’. If only ‘please consider not driving your kids to school if not absolutely necessary’ worked then school streets wouldn’t be implemented in the first place.
These are all good points, and to be clear I’m not suggesting everyone walks to school, it’s exactly the needless journeys that I’m talking about. Even small changes in behaviour can reduce congestion and pollution and risk of accidents around schools.
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Well I did say no one needs to drive their children to school “unless that child has mobility issues or there are other extraordinary circumstances”.
@robin.orton has kindly sent me a copy of Lewisham’s letter. I shall ask Lewisham to circulate the letter to the neighbours who will inevitably be affected. It’s extraordinary to me that residents in that part of the street can still come and go as and when they choose - presumably so can their employees, which makes for an interesting time should any of the planning applications for that part of Thorpewood be approved.
Thanks too to @EmmaJ for the info on Eliot Bank School. From the school’s website I also learn that they now stagger the entry/exit times for different year groups.
I wonder if part of the reason for favouring Eliot Bank children (at least in the immediate vicinity of the school) over others is because it’s part of a Federation? Does that maybe give them more political clout?
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Hi @marymck
I was in both the co-ordinating group and the Thorpewood Avenue working group.
Firstly, I couldn’t find a link to the 2015 CPZ consultation report. I can pm it to you but I had a look for the relevant details. There is a lot in there but the upshot was the council (this was before Leo’s time) through their measurement of traffic pressure on the road and local pressure concluded that the greater pressure was on the lower half but felt they couldn’t just have part of the road/area as a CPZ. They acknowledged though there was a need to do something.
This rumbled on for a while and at the assembly where we had the Meet the Mayor and question him session. I asked him what he was going to do to fulfil the council’s commitment. He asked that the Thorpewood Avenue Working Group be setup to look into it. Leo was appointed to head this up.
The working group wasn’t particularly well publicised and attendance was probably down to locals getting their neighbours to attend. It was open to all but the majority were Thorpewood Avenue residents with a representative of the local schools. I think the great thing was that it united the road and made people think about the road as being one with similar problems.
School Streets (School Pedestrian Zone SPZ) were seen as an option but only for the whole road. There was never any discussion of a school street for the bottom or the top. Unsurprisingly it would not have been acceptable in a group that was looking at Thorpewood as one road. People discussed the option and saw the complexity of the issues and the number of cameras. Many residents felt that a school street should only be brought in with a CPZ. We were told repeatedly by Leo that any proposal which we agreed on whether a CPZ or SPZ would need to get approval from the local area including Radlet, Derby Hill Crescent etc. I don’t think he mentioned Kirkdale but it sounds like you mentioned it to him.
There was a lot of concern about child safety and pollution but it was about the whole road and not just the top part. The same goes for schools, there was discussion about both schools but never singling out Eliot Bank for special treatment or feeling that because Holy Trinity was smaller, it deserved less attention.
I have had some contact from people from the working group, the people from the bottom are feeling betrayed and feel Leo is making a bad situation a lot worse.
The people from the top accept they got lucky and say they would be furious if it had gone the other way but say that Leo seems to have destroyed the consensus and offended a lot of people.
There is fear that the desire for a CPZ which has receded because of Covid might end up now happening because of the extra pollution and congestion which will now be concentrated below the Radlet Camera.
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The Forest Hill CPZ Consultation Study 2016 & can be view if you google this & click on Forest Hill. The report is available in full. Sorry as I am new to this site I’m not sure how to show the link here.
On the number of cars dropping children & the catchment areas, families often move once there children have started at Eliot Bank to areas miles away but continue to have there children at Eliot Bank so travelling by cars are their only option. Eliot Bank is an outstanding school so competition for places is high. This point was brought up in the Thorpewood Ave Parking Working Group but never answered by Eliot Bank.
The encouragement for children to walk to school has been in operation at both schools for a few years now but had made little difference to the number of cars dropping & collecting children. I am not confident that journeys will reduce with this traffic system just move the drop off & collections to Kirkdale & Thorpewood Ave at Radlett Ave causing traffic chaos in the surrounding areas.
I’m not sure about the relevance of the discussion on the different in & outs schools are taking due to the Covid these will presumably revert back to one entrance once Covid restrictions are reduced. As I understand this road closure at school times is probably a long time change.
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Thanks @BorderPaul for that really helpful and thorough summary.
The Meet the Mayor Assembly must have been the one I missed. It was probably at the next Coordinators meeting that the Thorpewood Ave working group was mentioned. If memory serves there was mention of another working group too for a different area. I think @cllrSophieDavis might have been leading that one, but I might be wrong.
The thing is a community is about more than just one street. I’ve expressed my concerns for upper Kirkdale and Kelvin Grove since I first heard mention of school streets or a CPZ. It’s chaos at the junction of Thorpewood and Kirkdale in the mornings when the school run coincides with the morning rush. During the day, upper Kirkdale remains a quiet road but it is the thoroughfare for the many schools in our area. Far more so than Thorpewood, as we have Kelvin Grove too.
Leo is aware of this.
Our Council seems determined to set street against street, when really we should be standing up to them and seeing they fulfil their duty of care to all.
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Hi Emma, yes I apologise I got that wrong. Eliot Bank is a two form entry school and I am happy to be corrected.
I will try and respond to this thread later with other matters people have raised.
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It is not a benevolent dictatorship when we have elections every four years.
Our manifesto clearly stated: Work with parents and schools to protect our children from toxic air. All Lewisham children will be encouraged to walk, cycle and scoot to school away from main roads. We will provide interventions to protect our most polluted playgrounds and build on our anti-idling schools programme to reduce emissions in the vicinity of our schools.
The executive has embraced School Street as an intervention, after some lobbying from me. Under new laws, we are able to put these interventions in place to support active travel for 18 months. These 18 months, or less, will act as a trial and consultation period, which seems absolutely reasonable to me.
In my memory, I had probably two complaints regarding parking/congestion issues near Holy Trinity, and these involved cars parking on the pavement on Dartmouth Rd. Eliot Bank, on the other hand, I received countless as the school is larger and congestion is greater. It is understandable (to me) why the intervention was focused here.
Today, I emailed our road safety and sustainable transport manager expressing anxieties about the proposed placement of the ANPR cameras and offering a potential remedy if the same level of congestion remains but below Radlett Avenue. My suggestion was that we could move the lower ANPR camera to the junction of Thorpewood Avenue & Dartmouth Road, while a rail-gate be placed at the junction of Derby Hill & Derby Hill Crescent. This isn’t without its issues, as one of the schools would need to agree to operate the gate and I am unsure how easy it is to move the cameras around.
Finally, noting some of the comments here… I don’t seem to understand the attitude that if a street gets nice things (model filter/CPZ/school street/public realm improvements) = “they get it but we don’t, therefore you’ve set street against street”. I have no idea where this attitude has been fostered and I sincerely hope it is not representative.
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I just don’t get why you can’t see this is divisive. You are creating more problems for nearby schools and streets to favour one small area and one small school.
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Indeed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more divisive policy by the council. It’s given rise to all kinds of nastiness, both between residents of streets that “win” and “lose”, and more generally amongst those who have ideologically pursued LTNs vs those affected by them.
Resident-on-resident warfare is really sad to witness. And all avoidable, if the council were to choose positive policy making as opposed to zero-sum.
Being objective I would raise the following points:
Polluted Playgrounds
Eliot Bank is in set in the middle of a tree lined avenue with the classrooms setback from the road. There are 2 playgrounds a front one which could not be described as the most polluted under any measure. There is a very large playground at the back which is about 50 metres from the road and could probably be described as one of the largest and least polluted playgrounds in Forest Hill if not Lewisham. It is absolutely brilliant that we have this resource for our kids.
I am not sure if many people such as the mayor would say
Holy Trinity is on a cramped corner with a B road and the classrooms are not setback from the road, the playground is small and could be described as polluted.
Parking/Congestion
It would be good if somebody could do an FOI regarding congestion on this but over the last ten years or longer the issue at Eliot Bank has been the parents parking over residents driveways and subjecting residents to abuse when challenged. A small but significant number of residents have been affected very badly. The council and the school have been unable to resolve this. Those residents are the ones who will benefit from gating that section of the road with two cameras.
Lewisham Transport surveys and the last CPZ consultation found that most parking pressure in this area was not the top of Thorpewood Avenue but the lower section with some very high levels of short term parking more normally seen in car parks. This is probably not just an issue for Thorpewood but also Derby Hill Crescent and Featherstone. These residents are the ones who will not benefit from these cameras and probably see it as having a major negative effect.
The worst congestion is the bottleneck section of Thorpewood Avenue between Derby Hill Cresecent and Dartmouth Road. This section takes most traffic in and out of Thorpewood Avenue. This struggles as it is single file when the driveways are parked over and often leads to gridlock both on TA/DHC .and smaller but significant queuing on Dartmouth Road when two cars try to pass at the same time. It is worrying that the original school street plan would have made this significantly worse as it would be a single point of entry and exit to TA at the busiest times. Any School Street that does not take this junction into account could easily lead to a lot more pollution with more engine idling outside Holy Trinity and the surrounding residences.
Leo, I welcome the fact that you are taking into account the concerns of the majority of residents and the children who will be affected. It would be good if you could recirculate the letter with any potential changes so that it becomes a commitment rather than an online chat.
I don’t think anybody feels that the residents outside Eliot Bank shouldn’t get two cameras to protect their driveways and protect them from parental abuse. I am totally in favour but I think this plan can be done in such a way that most residents and children in this area benefit from this change and thank you again for your proposed changes.
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Chris how is this tweet relevant - it’s about a cafe in Ealing by an obsessive anti LTN campaigner. We’re talking about local issues to do with School Streets. We can all find thousands of pro and con LTN tweets on Twitter if you want to go read them there but I would encourage people to go read them there and keep it on topic here. We’re lucky enough to have an engaged councillor in the thread and calling policies divisive does not add to the discussion or argument.
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I was replying specifically about a point the councillor raised in which he said he didn’t understand how modal filters could be divisive. I provided an example where they had been very divisive.
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Personally, I think this response is revealing. Instead of looking at the wider goal of School Streets - ie disincentivising parents from driving to school which will benefit the wider community as much as Eliot Bank’s neighbours - it is viewed as a narrow gain for lucky few. If the trial of the School Street is successful, the problems caused nearby are likely to be minuscule and transient as parents once driving to school begin to change their behaviour as they are no longer conveniently able to.
On a side note, I see similar responses to house building. The focus is always on the narrow, immediate ‘losers’ of a scheme. The magnitude of social and environmental ills caused by homelessness or extortionate rents and prices caused by an inadequate supply of housing in the South East, are overlooked.
It is very rare that the bigger picture is viewed.
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I live in Radlet Avenue, so am potentially affected. My instinct is to wait and see, and to make sure that any problems arising are promptly reported (to Leo?). I suggest others do the same.
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Emma, if it were possible to move Holy Trinity to a tree lined avenue, I would. If were feasible to close off Dartmouth Road to traffic to protect Holy Trinity, I would push for it.
When I’ve used congestion in these posts, I was talking about a number of things - including: pollution, dangerous manoeuvring of vehicles near a school entrance, and the problem of parents illegally blocking residents’ access to the public highway (by parking over their vehicle crossovers). From my casework, the last two issues are much greater outside Eliot Bank and unfortunately, on the first point, while we can try to disincentivise parents from driving to Eliot Bank (often past Holy Trinity), we can’t block off Dartmouth Rd.
I am aware that parking pressure is greater at the lower section of Thorpewood Avenue but that pressure is caused by commuters and gym/pools users, rather than school drop offs. I’ve been pushing for a CPZ to cover TA/RA/DHC/DH but under our current policies (which I’d like amended) for a CPZ to be placed a consultation and local referendum needs to take place. Atm, it is essentially up to residents to self-organise if they would like CPZ in this area.
As I said, I understand your concerns and have offered a suggested remedy. I would be grateful if you might email your concerns to me at cllr_leo.gibbons@lewisham.gov.uk and I will ensure that the response I receive from our Road Safety team is shared with you.
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As a resident of the lower part of TA I’m not seeing this as much of an additional problem. Our parking issues, in normal times, are much more to do with commuter parking, visitors to the library, swimming pools and shops plus dumped vehicles (Leo, there are currently 2, a Transit van that hasn’t moved in over a year and a Ford Sierra on the corner of Featherstone). If EB parents do try to use lower TA as a drop off point the greater concern, in my opinion, is that there will be nowhere for them to legally stop and they may block the road for a short time to residents and emergency vehicles. However, that would be easily remedied if LBC stationed a traffic warden there to hand out tickets for a while as a deterrent.
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