London Road Safety Award presented to Croydon for school pedestrian zones

LRSC award 2018

Ian Edwards, chair of the awards judging panel, Sarah Randell from Croydon Council & Cllr Teji Barnes incoming chair of the London Road Safety Council.

Croydon Council’s parking enforcement team has picked up the 2018 London Road Safety Award, in recognition of a scheme which creates temporary pedestrian zones outside schools.

The London Road Safety Award is designed to highlight and reward innovation and good practice in road safety education in London. Introduced in 2003 as the Laurie Bunn Award, in memory of a past LRSC chairman, the award was renamed in 2016.

The 2018 award was presented to Croydon Council at the London Road Safety Council’s AGM at the TfL offices at Palestra in Southwark on 20 July.

Launched in July 2017, the Croydon initiative has seen pedestrian zones introduced at a number of schools in the borough – as part of efforts to encourage parents and children to walk more, improve road safety and reduce pollution.

The pedestrian zones are in place on school days, around the times that children typically arrive and depart.

To enforce the scheme, Croydon Council uses temporary automatic number plate recognition cameras to confirm whether any vehicles passing through have advance permission.

Residents (and their visitors) and school staff are able to enter or leave the zones by applying free of charge for an advance access permit. Owners of cars that pass through the zones without a permit face a £130 fixed penalty notice, which can be reduced to £65 if paid within a fortnight.

Ian Edwards, chair of the London Road Safety Award judging panel, said:

“The judging panel was very impressed with the level of entries.

“We live in very challenging times with conflicting priorities, and at these times it can be very difficult to innovate, evolve and develop. It is therefore a great credit to those who have found the resources to do something different.

“The judges felt Croydon Council had adopted an excellent and exciting approach to an issue all local authorities face – how to reduce school parking and encourage more active travel.

“The panel was particularly impressed with how the approach was communicated and the amount of publicity the intervention had achieved at a local and national level.  It is also an excellent example of interdisciplinary working across a wide range of sectors.”

Two other schemes were commended by the judging panel.

Westminster City Council’s approach to the promotion of 20mph speed limits was described as an ‘excellent example of a wide-ranging communications initiative that targeted all elements of the community’.  

The London Borough of Bexley was commended for its ‘cycle recycling’ scheme, with the judges being ‘particularly impressed with the level of community involvement including: the police, youth offending team, local authority and the schools’.


20 July 2018