1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
[ Home Page > News > Public Consultation ]

Scrutiny Review of Transportation

 

Harlow Council's Scrutiny Committee is reviewing transportation within the town and wants to hear your views on the issue. During the course of the review, committee members will also be interviewing key agencies including:

 

  • Police
  • Essex County Council
  • School bus operators
  • Lollipop person co-ordinators

 

At this stage the review will be particularly looking at parking and issues connected with the school run.

 

There are over a billion school run trips per year in the UK. Information provided by Essex County indicated that 9% of primary children and 26% of secondary children in the County travel to school by car and Government figures indicate that “school run” traffic equates to 20% of cars on UK roads during the morning rush hour.

 

 Since 2002 parents have been given a degree of choice about which school their child attends and are no longer restricted by the proximity of a school to their home. However, children attending a school outside of their catchment area are not entitled to free bus travel and it can often be expensive for parents to send children to school on commercial buses particularly when there is more than one child in the family.

 

Cost is not the only factor affecting parents’ choice of transport method for their children. Indeed it is the choice of school which often dictates the choice of transport. A Department of Transport study revealed that, when questioned, parents listed the following factors (in order of priority) as affecting their choice of method to transport their children to school:

·        Child Safety

·        Cost

·        Convenience

·        Reliability of Transport

 

Therefore all of the above reasons have led to an increase in the number of cars used for the “school run”.

 

Review objectives

  1. It is suggested that the review objectives be as follows:

To review the effectiveness of policies to combat the adverse transport impacts of the school run including school travel plans.

 

To identify any strategic recommendations for improvement and to consider what actions, if any, are available to the Council and partners.

·       

View full committee report

 

The closing date for your views on parking and the school run in Harlow is 1 November 2007.

Please email your comments to mark.sloan@harlow.gov.uk or write to him at:

 

Mark Sloan

Scrutiny Committee Manager

Civic Centre

The Water Gardens

Harlow

CM20 1WG

 

All comments will be considered before the committee considers the report later in November and draws up a plan of action.