Original enquiry description:
Dear Sir/Madam
Concerns over the safety of the roads around Highlands, Merryhills and Grange Park schools, Worlds
End Lane, London N21. We are writing to you regarding the roads around our school that have been raising concerns for some time now, surrounding the safety of the school children and environmental issues such as congestion and pollution. To attempt to tackle these issues, Grange Park Primary school parliament, Merryhills Primary school environmental council, and Highlands Secondary and Sixth Form social action team have been meeting regularly to discuss ways we can try to improve road safety in these areas. The three schools have been involved in trying to find solutions to some of these issues, details as follows:
Regular meetings have taken place between all three schools involving school staff and students
and articles have been published in the school newsletters, raising awareness to parents and the
local community.
We have conducted surveys on the roundabout that connects Highlands and Grange Park
schools, highlighting how many cars illegally park on double yellow lines, and actually on the
painted roundabout area – this happens on a daily basis.
We have noted severe environmental concerns surrounding the fumes emitted from the cars
parked as many parents sit with their engines idling which is a health concern, particularly for
students who suffer from asthma.
This illegal parking has, on more than one occasion, meant that the schools have been unable to
allow quick entry for the emergency services when called to the schools, which is a huge health
and safety concern.
Drivers are very regularly speeding down Worlds End Lane over the 20 mph limit which could
result in an accident and cause serious injury to a child.
The primary schools have joined the police on their speed gun monitoring sessions on Worlds
End Lane, including speaking to drivers who were driving over the 20 mph limit.
All 3 schools will be running a road safety poster competition, again raising awareness amongst
the students and parents.
We believe in order to help make this very busy area much safer that the council should be doing more
to help support and we would ask that Enfield council to urgently consider the following :
1. No stopping double red lines to be considered to be installed on the roundabout area between
Highlands and Grange Park schools, as well as near all 3 schools in Worlds End Lane.
2. Urgent road repairs need to take place on this roundabout area as potholes and uneven surfaces
are now evident, which is likely to be a tripping hazard.
3. A pedestrian light controlled pelican crossing outside Highlands school where the zebra crossing
was implemented a few years ago – at the moment Highlands school staff are having to be on
duty outside school slowing cars down each day to allow safe crossing for students.
4. More signage along the length of Worlds End Lane highlighting to drivers that there are 3
schools in very close proximity to each other as many drivers appear to be unaware of this.
5. More speed signage which flashes the mileage speed of oncoming cars to show how fast drivers
are going in a 20mph zone.
6. Double yellow lines around the area near to Grange Park school, particularly on the bend just
past the school going towards Sainsburys where parking of cars, causes bottlenecks of drivers
passing by.
Increased daily surveillance by your CCTV camera vans or parking attendance to deter illegal or
dangerous parking, and issue more parking fines.
8. Funding from the local council for producing posters and banners (designed by pupils) to
promote no parking and adherence to speed limits outside our schools.
We have requested attendance at our meetings by the council so we could put our case forward to you
in person, but this invitation was rejected. We trust that the above matters can be urgently considered. Please can you confirm receipt of this letter.
Response
Thank you for your enquiry.
I attach copies of two recent responses on this topic from elected representatives, which I hope have already been fed back to the schools.
To summarise: Our parking enforcement team is focussing additional patrol activity at the sites and we hope this will curtail some of the most problematic parking issues. With around 100 school sites on the network, and a great many experiencing school run issues at the same time each weekday, the reality remains that enforcement resource needs to be shared amongst them. Creating a school street in this location would be more challenging than most of those introduced in Enfield so far; at present it is not one of the sites being looked at. We continue to advance project work that seeks to tackle the wider issues of excess reliance on car use for short journeys, such as the school run. In addition to unlocking the varied benefits of more active travel, the department feels there is also a road safety benefit in simply having fewer private motor vehicles on the network by converting the least essential trips to other modes. The Council cannot always respond with definitive solutions to reports of poor driving at specific locations; the police remain the body with powers to deal with speeding and with drivers failing to yield at zebra crossings.
In terms of explicit scheme work for casualty reduction, we do continue to use the modest funding we are able to access to bring forward interventions on the streets that attract the most injuries. At present, Worlds End Lane has a relatively happy history for road user injuries, which may reflect the good quality of the existing crossing provision, the lower speed limit and the other traffic calming features already present. This can be kept under review but, for now, it is hard to justify such changes as the costly removal of the zebra crossing, which already represents a relatively high degree of provision for pedestrians, to replace it with something slightly higher still, i.e. a pelican crossing, given that we have, for example, a request for crossing points near the school on Hoppers Road which is presently bereft of any formal crossing infrastructure.
I can report that the cabinet member was briefed by senior officers last week on these issues.
Regards
Traffic Engineering Manager
Environment and Communities Directorate
Enfield Council