Hackney families - Help us build, safer, healthier streets for kids

Our Vision

We want the Hackney school run to be safer and healthier for our kids. We want to encourage more families to ditch the car and walk, cycle or jump on a scooter.

Our Streets for Kids manifesto for Hackney is simple:

👉A car-free, enforced school street for every eligible school by 2030

👉More travel by family cargo bikes:

👉Child-friendly kerbsides.

Check out our manifesto in full at the bottom of this page.

Today's school run

Hackney Key Stats

👉The context...

Low car ownership - only 35% of Hackney households have a car

Limited space for kids - Hackney is the third most densely populated borough in London. Approximately 75% of residents do not have access to a private garden, so the streets are often children's only nearby outdoor space.

🚸The school journey...

Walking & cycling to schools - the majority of Hackney children - an estimated  73% of primary pupils and 90% of secondary pupils - walk, cycle or take public transport to school.

Driving to schools - whilst families driving to school is the minority, an estimated 27% of primary pupils and 10% of secondary pupils are driven.

❗The issues

Injury - at least 12 children a year are injured on their way to and from school each year, with many more injuries going unreported.

Asthma - 6-8% of children in Hackney are diagnosed with asthma

Childhood obesity - 25% of Hackney children in year 6 are classified as "obese" partly due to lack of exercise.

👉Hackney children deserve better

School Streets

●  Hackney has 46% of schools covered with a school street, the 4th highest in London.

●  Hackney has 46 School Streets covering 49 schools.

●  This means there are still plenty of schools without a School Street e.g. Mossbourne Community Academy

●  Some of these are substantial school streets, cited by campaigners as ambitious and significant. However, many are not big enough and don’t reduce driving or traffic around the school.

●  And many are not permanently enforced. 21 out of 49 school streets have

permanent ANPR, but 28 (57%) are enforced by just two mobile units. For

comparison, Lewisham has nearly 100% ANPR, Lambeth has 40 of 49 school streets with ANPR (82%), Southwark has 28 out of 30 with ANPR (93%).

According to our parent network in Hackney, these issues mean many schools don’t have an effective school street. They are too small and as over half are unenforced at any one time, driving parents know they will not be fined, and the school street is ignored.

What we want:

1. Where school streets are small, they should be enlarged and made more substantial, covering streets affected by school traffic, in addition to those with school entrances.

2. There should be 100% ANPR enforcement at schools without permanent cameras. We would like to see all school streets enforced by ANPR cameras or bollards.

3. We understand Hackney has LTNs that will potentially create a network of safe journeys to school, alongside school streets. However, we know even school streets in LTNs can still have traffic problems. We think these will be helped if the school streets are enforced and substantial, making it harder for cars to reach, enabling children to arrive and leave safely.

The opportunity:

Hackney Greens promised in their manifesto: 

Make school crossings a top priority, starting with the seven primary schools that currently have no safe crossings, and will create traffic-free School Streets for all eligible primary and secondary schools, as well as introducing them at colleges. (link Hackney Green Manifesto https://www.hackneygreens.org.uk/manifesto#chapter5)

We hope this promise is implemented as soon as possible.

Cargo bike funding

Cargo bikes are increasing in popularity in Hackney, enabled by the safer walking and cycling routes that have been created. However,  we need to overcome key barriers to help them grow and reduce family car use....

• What we want: A real strategy for secure cargo bike storage. Parents need the confidence that their bike will be there when they get back. We also need an expansion of the "OurBike" community rental scheme and more "Try Before You Bike" subsidies, such as that from Peddle My Wheels or CarryMe Bike https://www.carryme.org.uk/

• We also want more protected cycle lanes in Hackney. Hackney only has 5% of its road lengths covered by such cycle lanes, which compares poorly to other inner London boroughs such as Camden (9.7%), Newham (9.3%) and Tower Hamlets (6.7%)

• The opportunity: Funding for cycle storage is available for councils from Transport for London, so there is money available to implement a borough-wide secure cargo-bike storage approach. Several other London boroughs are also looking at secure cargo bike storage,  which Hackney could collaborate with.  For subsidies, these can also be funded through initiatives like the Mayor’s Air Quality Grant.

A child friendly kerbside

Hackney needs a kerbside strategy, much like Lambeth’s award winning strategy here.  Hackney Greens in 2026 have promised to:

“Design and implement a Kerbside and Parking Strategy to bring new life to kerbside spaces for safer crossings, greater accessibility, public seating, climate resilience and increased urban biodiversity.” We need that new strategy to be written and implemented, fast.

• What we want: Faster progress on reducing cars parked on the kerbside and creating more crossings and safer sightlines. We also want to see the implementation of fairer parking tariffs. Large SUVs that take up more valuable public space and create more road danger, should cost more to park.

• 25% of kerbside dedicated to child-friendly measures. These measures should be implemented in areas of parking and single yellow lines, rather than where there is currently no parking

• The opportunity: Using higher parking tariffs to discourage "carspreading" (the rise of unnecessarily large vehicles) will help boost council revenue, which can be ring-fenced to fund more kerbside improvements like zebra crossings, trees and rain gardens.  The green party committed to both a child-friendly kerbside and fairer parking tariffs in their manifesto.  So stay tuned…