The Healthy Streets Scorecard is an annual measure of how well local councils are enabling healthier travel choices for their residents.
This year, Havering has dropped from 29th to 31st which is a shame.
We know that there are some plans to extend Havering’s cycle network but they have been a long time in coming and their final delivery will take longer yet meanwhile Havering has the least amount of safe cycle paths in London.
Our friends at Better Streets for Havering have produced a more detailed analysis of the results below:
Let’s get right to it. This year, Havering has dropped from 5th from bottom, back to 3rd from bottom in the annual Healthy Streets Scorecard, which was their position in 2023. It isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of the performance of the Havering Resident’s Association which took over from the Conservatives (supported by the East Havering RA) in 2022 where the borough was 2nd from bottom. It’s also worth noting that the borough’s position isn’t relative to the others, it’s an absolute score and this year, it’s 1.70 whereas the highest performing borough is the City of London with 7.89. So why is Havering’s score so poor? Well, despite an improvement in sustainable modes being used, this was through increased public transport use. Havering has the lowest rate of cycling in London with just 3.2% of residents cycling once a week. One only has to experience the borough’s roads to understand why. Havering has the lowest proportion of car-free households in London and one of the highest levels of household car ownership, but of course, not everyone in a household can drive. The council hasn’t created any new low traffic neighbourhoods in years and the slight improvement in the coverage from 13.7% to 14.7% was only because some historic LTNs being added. There has been no increase in 20mph speed limits which cover just 9.9% of the borough’s road network and the coverage of controlled parking zones remains at 12.2%. The welcome addition of the 30 metres of one-way and 60 metres of cycle track as part of the South Street/ Eastern Road junction project completed last year is merely a rounding error in the 0.5% of borough road length with protected space for cycling. The “Travel for Life” work in schools improved participation, but things are pretty much static with the roll-out of school streets – the schools programme previously helped the borough into 5th place. It is hard to see what the borough might do next with elections early next year and with current projects stuck firmly with design approaches that were seen 20 years ago. This year we’ve just had a consultation for measures at the junction of Main Road with Pettits Lane which might be a little better for walking, but they will make cycling dangerous. We’ve also just had a consultation on adding green men crossings to the Upminster Road arms of the junction with New Road, but which have inaccessible staggered islands. There is just no ambition to change anything for the benefit of people walking, wheeling and cycling. Indeed, most of the council’s transport interest this year seems to have been preoccupied with the reconstruction of Gallows Corner. While the project is delivering a toucan crossing on the Eastern Avenue East arm, and it might deliver a crossing on Straight Road (as an afterthought), Main Road will remain terrifying to cross and the junction will remain awkward and time-consuming to navigate on narrow shared-use paths. A progressive council would have been demanding much better. The borough’s Active Travel Strategy was consulted on in November last year and yet won’t be going to the council’s cabinet until September this year. The pace in Havering would make a glacier blush. The problem with all of this is the council is simply not delivering transport choices for the people in the borough, but perhaps this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise as transport wasn’t part of the HRA’s 2022 “pledge”. |