Agenda item

Report of the Interim Director of Environmental Services

Members received the report which provided an update on the Marlborough School Streets Scheme consultation of 21 July 2022 to 9 October 2022 and the outcome of that consultation.

The consultation was originally scheduled to run from 21 July 2022 to 25 September, however, due to the Queen’s passing, some engagement sessions were rescheduled and therefore the consultation was extended to 9 October 2022.

The officer informed the Panel that although the recommendation was to delete the scheme based on the consultation results, officers were still looking into suitable alternatives to address the issues on Marlborough Hill. 

A Member thanked the officers, for carrying out the survey and commented that it was clear that local residents had voted against the scheme.  He said it was apparent that the mitigation before the latest consultation had not had the desired effect due to long standing issues.  7% consultation response was normally too low to make recommendations perhaps this was due to the summer holidays.  Assurance was needed to ensure that this would be a new low bar for decision making and hoped in the government was still funding school streets scheme and in future could still aim for a cleaner and pollution free environments in Harrow.

A Member questioned if any comments had been received from ward councillors on the proposal to delete the Scheme.

The Chair Cllr Ameet Jogia commented that he had not received any notice of any representations from the local ward councillors and would take that to mean that they had no objections to the officer’s recommendations.  The officer confirmed that no response had been received to the emails sent to ward councillors.

A Member confirmed that based on the results of the consultation that with regret the Ward Councillors had confirmed their agreement with the proposal to delete the scheme.

An Advisor questioned why the views of teachers from Newton Farm and Grimes Primary were not considered during the consultation and the officer explained that the consultation was for local residents and businesses in the area.

An Advisor commented that Harrow Cyclist’s vision every child should cycle to school was unlikely to materialise if traffic was reintroduced on Marlborough Hill and as the recommendation was contrary to the equality impact assessment and many benefits of a school streets scheme to the elderly and disabled would be lost, she urged the Panel to refuse the officer’s recommendation.

Another Advisor commented that School streets schemes could be successful as was the case in the Grimes Dyke School Scheme but that in this case it had not been successful.

A Member suggested that perhaps a review could be carried out to identify what went wrong and take those into consideration in the implementation of other street schemes in the future.

A Member commented that lessons could be learnt from the successful implementation of the implementation of Margaret school streets scheme and issues raised by residents about the Marlborough School streets scheme should have been mitigated.  He suggested that a report to the Panel detailing lessons learnt could be beneficial.

RESOLVED:  That the Panel noted the contents of the report and recommended to the Portfolio Holder for Environment and Community Safety that the Marlborough School Streets Scheme be deleted.