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Is your Lambeth school run dangerous and polluted? We think your family deserves better. Our Lambeth group of parents and school organisers are working to make the borough’s streets safer, healthier, and happier for our children. Here's what's happening — and how you can join us.
Our vision
We want the Lambeth 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 Lambeth 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
Lambeth Key Stats
👉The context...
Low car ownership - only 40% of Lambeth households have a car.
Limited space for kids - Lambeth is the fourth most densely populated borough in London. Over half of residents live in flats without gardens, so the street is often children's only outdoor space.
🚸The school journey...
Walking & cycling to schools - the majority of Lambeth children - an estimated 72% of primary pupils and 90% of secondary pupils - walk, cycle or take public transport to school. That's around 17,000 Lambeth children.
Driving to schools - whilst families driving to school is the minority - an estimated 28% of primary pupils and 10% of secondary pupils
❗The issues
Congestion and pollution - school run traffic creates congestion, delaying bus times by 50% and increasing air pollution by 50% compared to school holidays.
Injury - 50 children a year, 2 primary school classes, injured on their way to and from school.
Asthma - 8% of children diagnosed with asthma, higher than the national average (pre-ULEZ).
Childhood obesity - 25% of 10 and 11-year-olds live with obesity, higher than the national average.
👉Lambeth children deserve better.
So is Lambeth council making progress?
Lambeth Council is now led by the Green Party, with support from the Liberal Democrats. They took over in May 2026 from 20 years of Labour.
Councils control 95% of London’s streets, so there is a lot they can do to fix the school run. Here’s the current state of play in the borough.
School streets
Lambeth ranks sixth in London, with 46% of schools having a school street. They are almost all enforced by ANPR cameras, nearly always cover all gates to the school and they are getting bigger in size each year. So they are working well, but…they aren't finished.
What we want: We need school streets for the remaining 10 eligible primary schools by March 2027. We also need them for our secondary schools, where kids are navigating roads independently.
The opportunity: Funding is available for councils to implement school street programs from Transport for London. Additionally, funding for the 10 remaining primary school streets was already secured from TFL by the previous Labour administration. Plus enforcement cameras pay for themselves within two years. The green party included these school street commitments in their 2026 manifesto.. so we hope to see signs on the roads very soon.
Cargo bike funding
Cargo bikes are increasing in popularity in the borough, 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.
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 approach. Several other London boroughs are also looking at secure cargo bike storage, who Lambeth could collaborate with. For subsidies, these can also be funded through initiatives like the Mayor’s Air Quality Grant. The green party committed to “reducing existing barriers to family cargo bike use” in their 2026 manifesto, so there is a brilliant window of opportunity to get cars off the road and enable family cargo bike use to take off in Lambeth.
A child-friendly kerbside
Lambeth’s 2023 Kerbside Strategy aims to switch 25% of kerbside space from cars to sustainable use by 2030. Currently, we’re only at 10%.
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.
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…
The challenges
A general overall challenge for this Lambeth administration and our families campaigning in the borough is that there is no overall party control, so it may be more difficult to get decisions approved. Additionally, with TFL funding (the long term implementation plan process) there are many other boroughs competing for the money. However, Lambeth has a strong track record of ambition and delivery with TFL funding, so there is plenty of potential if the political commitment is there.
The borough also has a big drop off on the number of children at primary school age. This means that schools have empty places and parents have more choice of schools for their children. From a transport perspective, this could lead to more school runs being driven , since the propensity for parents to drive their kids to primary school increases the further they have to travel. So this is another big reason why family cargo bikes are such an important part of the sustainable transport picture for Lambeth.
Get involved!
There are so many exciting opportunities for change and we need your voice to make it happen! Here’s how you can help:
👉Join our Lambeth WhatsApp: Jump into the Lambeth Solve WhatsApp to share your ideas, stay up to date on progress, take an action or join a termly call.
👉Join your school group Whatsapp: Are you in a school-specific Solve WhatsApp group asking for a school street or safer crossing? If not, why not start one?
👉Follow us: Check out the Lambeth Solve Instagram. Send us your photos and stories!
Let's work together to make the school run better for Lambeth families.
Appendix - Our full "Streets for Kids" manifesto
All eligible schools to have an effective car-free school streets by 2030: School streets are closures to the roads around schools to traffic at drop-off and pick-up times. This opens the space to children to walk and cycle safely. To work effectively, these need to be enforced by bollards or ANPR cameras. They also need to be a sufficient size, for example covering 2 or 3 streets around the school, to make sure that the traffic isn’t just displaced to another school gate or key entry route. We want all primary and secondary schools to have a school street.
Increased funding for family cargo bikes by 2030. Family use of cargo bikes cuts the number of cars on the school run, making it safer and healthier for everyone. We want it to be much easier to hire or own and store a family cargo bike. That means secure storage and subsidies for families.
Child-friendly kerbsides: Densely parked cars block sightlines, making it dangerous for children to cross the roads. Large cars, such as SUVs, make it even worse. We want fewer parked cars, fewer SUVs, safer crossings, improved sightlines as well as greening measures such as trees, parklets and rain gardens for drainage (SUDs) .
Check out the manifesto in detail here.