Parents and children protest outside Brookfield Primary School after the low traffic neighbourhood scheme was paused

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DARTMOUTH Park residents said they were “quite cross” that a low traffic neighbourhood scheme was paused by the council.

Parents and their children at Brookfield Primary School gathered for a protest before school started on Tuesday morning to express their support for the recently scrapped Dartmouth Park Healthy Neighbourhood Scheme.

Stephen Edwards, a music teacher at the school who lives in the area, said: “Some of us have been waiting for this for 20 years, and we’re quite cross that it’s just been paused because it’s the usual thing.

“When you get opposition making a lot of noise they seem to get heard first. There’s a list of reasons that, for me, are just so apparent why we need to reduce the volume of cars running through.”

He added: “We’ve got too much rat-running traffic through the neighbourhood, especially on Chester Road, Chetwynd, Dartmouth Park Hill and Swains Lane – they’re the key ones.

“If you deal with the traffic on any of these, you really have to ensure that there aren’t any leaks through the rest of the neighbourhood.”

He said objections cited ambulance access as an issue but he thinks the scheme would ease traffic and allow the emergency services to travel better, mentioning the ambulance park gate that has been on Dartmouth Park Road.

Parent Jamie Inman said: “This is a small community neighbourhood that has turned into a commuter run. At the moment three or four of the roads are commuter roads for people who go from one side of London to the other – this is not what these roads were designed for.

“There’s a lot of grassroots support for this scheme, which was just starting to make its voice heard. The council needs to listen to us too.”

Parent Fran Bury said: “A few times in the last couple of years, we’ve had vehicles that have completely overturned, like, flipped over, or they’ve mounted the curb and completely knocked over a lamppost.

“These are really significant [incidents], which is not the kind of driving of people going about their neighbourhood – it’s the driving of rat-running. And it doesn’t make us as parents feel like it’s a safe place for our children to go around.

“They were really close to schools and a very quiet residential area where you wouldn’t expect people to be driving fast.”

David Lincoln, a community nurse, said: “[The Whittington Hospital] is a big local employer, and there’s no safe cycle access to the hospital from any direction. So this would be really helpful for patients, visitors and staff cycling to the hospital.”

Betsy, a pupil at Brookfield, said: “We think it would be nice to walk around with our friends and be able to go places by ourselves because at the moment adults say it’s too dangerous for us to go by ourselves.”

Leader of the council, Labour councillor Richard Olszewski said: “When you share your views, it really does make a difference to us coming up with ideas.

“We remain committed to investing to tackle the problems our initial proposals sought to address, and hope that residents will continue to work with us so that we can make the areas around Dartmouth Park better for local people.”

Andrew Sulston, chair of the Highgate Society, welcomed the pause.

“We understand there were over 2,000 responses including 773 emails, and those we’ve seen raised important concerns,” he said.

“We welcome the commitment to including consideration of the surrounding streets as well as the streets within the defined area, which must necessarily include the impact on boundary roads and external roads including in nearby Haringey areas as well as in Islington.”

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