Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette
Parents urge council to act on air pollution
GROUP WANTS SCHOOL PICK-UP AND DROP-OFF RESTRICTIONS
A WEST London dad has called out parents who drive a short distance to take their kids to school while pollution in the area has reached levels that are putting children at serious risk of health problems, and even potentially shortening their lives.
Hamish Reid is joined by other parents and head teachers across Hammersmith and Fulham whose concern for the health impacts of air pollution on their children have driven them to appeal to the council to shut roads at school pick-up and drop-off times.
Mr Reid, 36, is a dad of three. He said the catchment area for his kids’ primary school is very small – averaging around 400 metres – so “all parents should live close” and yet many still drive short distances to drop off their kids.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) sets recommended limits for air pollution and one of two monitoring stations in Hammersmith and Fulham – in Hammersmith town centre – shows levels are above the maximum concentration of pollutants, known as PM2.5. The WHO regards air pollution in cities in particular as “the single biggest environmental threat to human health”.
Children in London are almost four times more likely than those elsewhere in England to attend a school in a highly polluted area, according to a City Hall report.
“It’s bad for your health and bad for all of us,” Mr Reid told MyLondon. To Mr Reid, introducing traffic restrictions around schools at pick-up and drop-off times is a “really straightforward” way to tackle people driving short distances.
Nikita Crocker is another parent living in the borough who fears the consequences of exposing her children to such high levels of air pollution.
She is so concerned she takes back streets as often as possible and never sits on a high street at an outside table with her two children, who are both under the age of three, in order to protect them.
“I wouldn’t put them in that position,” she told MyLondon. “It has changed how I would go about things usually.”
Ms Crocker is concerned that air pollution is not being treated like a “health emergency”.
She cited the contrast between responses to the heatwave – letters home about preventing heat stress in school, tips on how to help kids cope, and even allowing children to be kept at home – while during high pollution days there is no communication from schools and people are simply urged to limit exercise.
She said: “London’s air pollution crisis is especially damaging for children, routinely hospitalising asthma sufferers and stunting the lung development of all children growing up in areas where the air is not safe to breathe.
“Scientists say this childhood exposure is likely to knock years off their lives and lead to a range of chronic respiratory and other health problems.
“We need the council to urgently step up and use the powers it has to protect our kids, and so-called ‘Healthy School Streets’ [which are currently in place across the borough] do nothing to address the core problem of motor traffic at the school gates and are simply not good enough.”
Ms Crocker and Mr Reid are part of a group called Hammersmith & Fulham Clean Air Parents, who wrote a letter to the council detailing one of their chief concerns – that Hammersmith and Fulham is the only inner London borough, and one of only two London boroughs (the other being Bexley), that does not have School Streets.
School Streets is an initiative where temporary traffic restrictions are introduced at school drop-off and pick-up times to reduce pollution and create a safer environment for children. Hammersmith & Fulham initially announced it was going to introduce 13 School Streets in 2020 before creating Healthy School Streets instead, which do not include traffic restrictions.
This is despite the fact the City Hall report found closing the roads around schools to traffic at pickup and drop-off times has reduced polluting nitrogen dioxide levels by up to 23% and is strongly supported by parents. Instead, Ms Crocker says the Healthy School Streets only “beautify” a street and use “token gestures of trying to improve air quality” such as planters and wider pavements.
Head teachers, such as Normand Croft Community School’s Paul Jobson, also believe School Streets would improve road safety around schools. After some near misses where excited children have run out into the street, Mr Jobson said many parents have approached him asking for him to do something.
“I explain that we are doing what we can to keep children safe but we are limited in what we can do,” he told MyLondon.
Some of his Year 6 students even got in touch with the council a few years ago asking for the road outside the school to be closed at pick-up and drop-off.
Mr Jobson said the children highlighted things like, “other local schools have a zebra crossing and even a lollipop lady outside of their gate to help keep everyone safe, but we have nothing”.
The parents group rallied together 17 head teachers and sent a letter branding the Healthy School Streets programme “inadequate and misleading”, and called on the council to introduce proper School Streets in the borough. They sent the letter on June 16 but say they have not received any response yet.
The council claims it did send out a letter in response in which it acknowledged that air quality audits at the borough’s primary schools had shown many are in favour of traffic action around schools. It says it “firmly supports” that need, but considers School Streets “too narrow and limited an approach towards improving air quality” and plans to go further than what other boroughs currently have in place.
Instead, the council says it supports “wider, more radical and effective action for Clean Air Neighbourhoods – which would include School Streets Plus”, with the ambition to cover all the borough’s schools.
The aim of School Streets Plus is to “minimise or stop traffic displacement to neighbouring residential streets while encouraging schools to offer places locally to pupils”. The council says consultation will take place in due course with further details to come.
We need the council to urgently step up and use the powers it has to protect our kids...
Nikita Crocker