Testing ways to make Healthy Streets in Southwark

Key partnership information

Partner: Southwark Council and Lucy Saunders, Director at Healthy Streets

Funding amount: £250,000

Duration: December 2020 – May 2021

Programme: health effects of air pollution and children’s health and food

What we’re doing together

Working in partnership with Southwark Council’s Public Health, Highways and Transport Policy teams and Lucy Saunders of Healthy Streets, we are piloting ways to make our streets easier and safer for local residents to walk, cycle and spend time on.

Three pilot locations have been selected in areas with high levels of childhood obesity; schools with poor air quality; high levels of social housing and a high proportion of families living on lower incomes. Each of the locations were assessed using the Healthy Streets Indicators that form the foundation of transport policy in London to identify the changes that would deliver the biggest impact for local families. 

In each location a combination of the following measures are being tested: 

• Traffic filters
• Temporary pavement widening
• Improving accessibility by adding dropped kerbs 
• Improving crossing points
• Adding seating and planting
• Improving cycling access into the neighbourhood
• Removing parking spaces

By the end of the pilots we will better understand how much the streets physically changed in relation to the Healthy Streets Indicators; how people are using the streets differently; and how the flow of motorised vehicles and cycles has changed on streets inside and on the boundary of intervention areas. We will be comparing the changes in our three pilots to two control areas where no changes have been implemented. 

The three key questions we will explore, and how we will measure them are: 

1. How much have the streets physically changed in relation to the Healthy Streets Indicators?
   As measured by: Healthy Streets Check for Designers
2. Are people using the streets differently?
   As measured by:
   1. Automatic Traffic Counts, which measure the numbers of motorised vehicles and cycles on the road and their speeds
   2. On-street Cameras, which measure the numbers of people walking, cycling, driving and dwelling and categorise the different kinds of activities they are doing: standing, sitting, playing etc.
3. How are traffic flows changing on adjacent streets?
   As measured by: traffic counts on adjacent streets

We are also investing in community engagement, carried out by ClearView Research, to ensure we hear from local people who do not usually engage through traditional consultation platforms. ClearView will recruit and train local community researchers to gather feedback from residents over a three month period to both improve the schemes and inform the longer-term council consultation.