About School Streets

A School Street is where a road with a school temporarily closes to reduce vehicular movement during the school's opening and closing times, to enhance the safety of school children.

Why we want to create School Streets

We have been working with schools in the borough to promote active travel for a number of years, however many schools and parents are still concerned by road safety and air pollution around schools.

We receive many requests for general traffic management and safety improvements that are demonstrated to not be justified, given finite resources, in terms of accidents, speeds and traffic flows.

However, a more moderate approach is taken near schools recognising the particular concerns there are towards children's safety, active travel and exposure to pollution. It is hoped that some of these concerns will be addressed by reducing the number of vehicles at school start and finish times.

By temporarily closing roads outside the school, we hope to create a safer, more pleasant environment around the school. We aim to reduce congestion and idling vehicles as well. New schemes are being proposed under an experimental traffic order to be able to monitor any impacts before considering making the schemes permanent.

Pilots and consultations

School Street schemes were approved to be consulted on and implemented, if approved, at the Transport and Air Quality committee (Item 16). Since the committee approval in September 2019 and the impact COVID-19 had on schools needing to social distance pupils, parents/carers and staff, we received funding to implement School Streets in Richmond before 15 October 2020.

All schools were contacted offering either a School Street or other measures where School Streets were not feasible.

Phase 1 and 2 School Streets trials/pilots were publicly consulted on as part of an Experimental Traffic Order and consultation ran alongside the trial. The impacts of these schemes were reported to the September Transport and Air Quality committee (Item 22) before a decision was made whether to make them permanent.

All the Phase 1 and 2 School Streets were approved to be made permanent apart from Hampton Hill Junior School SS9, which was removed following the trial.

A separate consultation for St Richard Reynolds Catholic College SS4 closed on 10 November 2021 and was reported separately at November Transport and Air Quality committee (Item 6), with a decision to make it permanent.

Phase 3 Schools Streets do not have the same time constraints as phases 1 and 2. For this reason, we are holding pre-trial public consultations ahead of Experimental Traffic Order trials should the outcome of the pre-trial be in favour.

Phase 1 and 2 School Street programme

These were implemented under an experimental Traffic Management Order and residents, businesses and the wider school community were given an opportunity to make representations whilst the scheme was live. We created a project overview and timeline (pdf, 114 KB), showing each stage of the programme, including when we engaged with residents, the school and the wider school community (pupils and parents/carers).

Phase 1 and 2 School Streets were approved to be made permanent at the Transport and Air Quality committee. Please see the linked drawings for further information on each proposal.

Phase 3 School Streets

We consulted on the following School Streets and due to there being a majority support for the scheme St Mary Magdalen’s Catholic School underwent a trial supported by an experimental traffic order alongside further consultation. Thomson House School Street is currently being trialled, also with an ETO and further consultation following the January Transport and Air Quality committee decision (Item 30). Nelson School Street is on hold following a decision from the school to remove the access the School Street was protecting.

How to comment

Visit the consultation page to make comments on open consultations. Residents in the local area will receive notification leading up to the consultation dates for any future School Streets.

We have also invited the following schools to partake in Phase 3:

• St James Catholic Primary, SS20, Twickenham

Future School Streets will also be implemented under an experimental traffic order, subject to prior public consultation.

If you want to hear more about the initiative for your school, please email us putting Richmond School Street in the title of your message.

Phase 4 School Streets

Schools and councillors have approached the council for some schools to be considered in the next phase of School Streets in Richmond.

The November 2023 meeting of the Transport and Air Quality (TAQ) committee approved a paper to commence Richmond’s Phase 4 School Streets.

The following Phase 4 schools were approved by committee:

• Collis Primary School Street SS21
• Sheen Mount School SS23
• Heathfield Infant and Junior Schools SS22 - as part of a current open engineering consultation with a package of wider measures (closes 30 November)
• St James Catholic Primary School SS20
• Nelson School SS18 – subject to planning approval and a decision from school as to which gate will be opened for pupils

Richmond will be developing Phase 4 in four stages:

• Background - discussions with schools, councillors and TAQ committee
• Early engagement  - sessions with residents and the school community – to help develop a proposal
• Pre-trial consultation - proposal based on the early engagement sessions and further engagement with residents and the school community
• Launch trail School Street – if supported and reopen consultation, undertake monitoring in the form of Hands Up Surveys, Automated Traffic Counts, Stage 1-3 Safety Audits to be reported to committee along with consultation feedback for a decision to make permanent, amend or remove

Stakeholder views are important to us as is their local knowledge of the area. Soon we will be starting the first stage of our engagement programme, which includes both a pop-up session at the school gates after school and an evening drop-in session at the school for residents and the school community. The sessions will be arranged by our engagement partner and local residents and schools will be notified in advance. These sessions are intended to be a chance to voice school travel related concerns in the area, share local information that may be relevant to a School Street and propose actions. The information shared with us will be discussed with our engineers who will consider their feasibility and design a scheme with the early engagement feedback in mind.

This proposal will then be consulted on alongside more engagement sessions and if supported we will launch a trial.

Please view each proposed School Street above to find out more about the engagement and consultation processes specific for each school.

Restrictions

Vehicles will not be able to enter the streets between the times of operation unless they are considered exempt. Please see our frequently asked questions section for further details of exemptions and how to register an exemption online for CCTV ANPR camera enforced School Streets.

Signs, like the generic example alongside, will inform drivers of the restrictions before the entrance to the School Street. At some closures, advance warning signs will be installed, where needed, as will camera signs, where appropriate.

Do not confuse permit holders with holders of Controlled Parking Zone permits. These are entirely separate permits, and one does not cover the other.

Residents and businesses who live and work within the School Street restricted area will be able to apply for exemption, as well as Blue Badge holders needing to access these properties. The scheme will not operate in the school holidays or at weekends. Full details on this are included in each consultation.

School Streets operate term time only, but signs will not be closed during school holidays and half term breaks. Please see school term dates for more general information, or the individual schools page for a link to specific term times.

Enforcement

There may be a physical barrier preventing access, and details of each scheme are provided during the consultation and on the website.

Vehicles already parked within a School Street can exit without a penalty.

Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras have been installed at some School Streets. Please see the exemption page for details of which schools these are and how to register exemption.

Displaced traffic

There were concerns of displaced traffic, so the schemes were trialled over 12 months to fully understand their impact. This also allowed the opportunity for people to adapt and change their travel behaviour. Our monitoring showed that most schools enjoyed a reduction in car travel to school and that the reduction in vehicles entering the School Street was greater than the displaced traffic in adjacent streets.

For more information, email schoolstreets@richmond.gov.uk.

Frequently asked questions

View the most common questions about School Streets.