2026 London elections
Ask your council for
Streets for Kids!
London's streets are a hostile place for children and the school run is the most dangerous and polluted part of their day. We want streets to be safer, healthier and more joyful for our kids.
A safer, healthier,
more joyful
school run
The Streets for Kids Manifesto
An effective school street for every school.
Access to a cargo bike for every family.
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Reallocate kerb space in child friendly ways.
We are calling for every London councillor candidate to commit to our Streets for Kids asks:
An effective school street for every school.
A school street is where the road by a school is closed to traffic during the hours of school drop off and pick up, to prioritise the health and safety of the majority of families who are walking or wheeling to school. Exemptions are provided for residents, blue badge holders and SEND pupils.
Currently there are over 800 school streets in London, but they vary in their ability to protect children. We want effective school streets and this means they should be:
Substantial - when only a small area outside the school gates is closed, a school street can present the same dangers as before, just in different locations. A school street has to be big enough to disperse traffic so there are no seriously problematic points that children have to pass through to get to school. It should be a significant amount of the road the school is on, and additional adjacent roads which are impacted by school traffic.
Enforced - permanent cameras or bollards are effective ways of restricting cars from accessing the school street area. They are reliable and do not depend on volunteers or sporadic monitoring by mobile camera units.
Once boroughs have implemented effective school streets, they should connect them together to create joined up school street networks. These are made by linking effective school streets together, using timed restrictions on the roads that connect them. These networks fully realise the potential of school streets by giving children a comprehensive car-free route on which they can walk or cycle the majority of their school run safely.
Measurement:
Number of effective school streets and school street networks in the borough by 2030.
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Access to a cargo bike for every family
Electric Cargo bikes have huge, yet largely untapped, potential in the UK. In other countries, they are a normal, everyday way for families to travel—especially for school runs and local trips—usually serving as a car replacement to create safer, calmer streets.
They can often be the quickest and most convenient way to transport children for local trips and they are significantly cheaper than owning or travelling by car. A recent trial of loaning e-cargo bikes to households in UK cities that were relatively car-dependent led to more than 50% of car-use being switched to e-cargo bikes. Less car journeys make the roads safer for those walking and cycling. One in five of the households purchased an e-cargo bike at the end of the trial.
But right now, those barriers are too high. The upfront cost of an e-cargo bike, the lack of secure storage, and the fear of having to ride on busy, hostile roads make it an unfeasible option for many families—especially those on lower incomes who could benefit the most from cheaper, healthier travel.
We believe boroughs can deliver a step change by committing to a dedicated cargo-bike fund to unlock the potential of family cargo bike use in London to make it more accessible and equitable. This would include:
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Delivering secure cargo bike parking options including overnight (residential) and destination parking.
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Subsidising the purchase of cargo bikes, especially for low income households.
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Investing in community trials and cargo bike share schemes that focus on accessibility, training and behaviour change.
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Measurement:
Level of council funds directed to enabling household cargo bike uptake.
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Reallocate kerb space in child-friendly ways.
Children now are “the least active generation ever,” and with 20% of London’s children having no access to a garden, it is important that they are able to safely navigate the world on their doorstep. Cars are stationary 90% of the time, parked at the kerbside, dominating the pavements of many London boroughs. Add to this the huge growth in SUVs - from 3% to 30% of London’s cars in 20 years - and it is becoming impossible for children to see past the cars to safely cross their local streets.
Boroughs should prioritise the kerbside as much as possible in favour of child-friendly measures that help kids to be safer, more active and healthy. We are asking councils to deliver a dedicated kerbside strategy by 2027 that will enable them to:
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Increase double yellow lines, zig zag lines and informal crossings so children can see and be seen.
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Install more parklets, cycle hangars, shared-use mobility bays and greenery whilst maintaining safe sight lines.
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Introduce fairer parking tariffs to discourage carspreading, when cars are unnecessarily large and dangerous.
Measurement:
Percentage of kerbside dedicated to these child-friendly measures and implementation of fairer parking tarriffs.
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