Parents reignite pleas for safer crossings near Clapton school following two collisions

Frustrated parents have renewed pressure on Hackney Council to install safe crossings near their Clapton school after two collisions in the area this year.

Families at Southwold Primary School have for months been lobbying the Town Hall to put zebra crossings at a nearby junction.

Earlier this year, they warned that cars were “thundering” down Mount Pleasant Hill and that illegal parking was blocking pedestrians’ views.

They said the area was dangerous and had left them feeling “terrified”.

In January, the council assessed the streets around the school, which sits on Detmold Road.

Inspectors concluded that it did not meet the criteria, but officers are now making plans to install zebra crossings.

It follows two incidents on Mount Pleasant Lane and Theydon Road — one of which was fatal.

Last month, an elderly woman was tragically killed at a crossing outside the Co-op on Theydon Road, just a few yards away from another school, Leaways.

In May, a young Southwold pupil was struck by a van while he and his mother were cycling up Mount Pleasant Lane on their way home from school.

Charlie Hyde, 10, was hospitalised for a week with a dislocated neck and needed an operation to save his leg.

Leeanne Martin, the boy’s mother, said: “Let’s be honest — it’s a risk coming out of your house.

“They drive like maniacs up the hill, you have to constantly double-check. Even if it’s free at both ends, I don’t feel safe crossing that road.

“Does there need to be a dead child before they realise they need to put in a crossing?”

Both her and her son needed therapy as a result of the ongoing trauma from the incident.

Charlie’s collision came just three months after the Citizen reported on the Friends of Southwold (FOS) campaign’s efforts to make active travel on the surrounding roads safer.

FOS had previously implored former transport chief Mete Coban to investigate the location’s safety.

Dad John West told the Citizen he had received an email from Coban in June, confirming that the council’s road safety team Streetscene was looking into the placement of a crossing at Southwold Road.

A timeline was not given but ex-councillor Coban, who joined Mayor Sadiq Khan’s team as environment and energy lead weeks later, at the time said the crossing was in “the early stage of its development”.

Having seen little movement over the following months, the issue was raised again by West’s wife Claire, who contacted Coban’s successor, Cllr Sarah Young, in November.

Young’s reply stated that Cllr Ian Rathbone had asked Streetscene to make an “assessment of improvements that could be made”.

West said these were “delaying tactics”, since no apparent progress had been made in several months.

“It doesn’t butter any parsnips,” he said.

“I’m not a traffic engineer, nor am I a psychologist, and I can’t tell you why people drive like crazy, but I don’t know why the council is sitting on their hands when it is so obvious there is a structural problem here.

“Zebra crossings are not a panacea. If putting one there still means someone can be struck and die of their injuries, then there is very clearly a plague of unsafe driving on these roads.”

Days later, at a meeting of the full council, parent Ruth Jenkins also appealed to Young to act.

She had previously taken the parents’ demands to a council meeting on 24 January, where she asked the Town Hall to “safeguard” children and Millfields Park users by installing a crossing across Southwold Road.

This time, she asked if the council could commit to putting in safe crossings within the next six months, given the suffering caused by collisions in recent months.

Cllr Young said: “We were extremely sad to hear of the accidents around the streets. The council, along with Transport for London, has a Vision Zero approach to road safety, and no accident is deemed acceptable.”

She said the Town Hall had arranged for more inspections of the location and a further review of the surrounding area, and revealed that Streetscene had “already designed a team to put in a zebra crossing” on Southwold Road with the hopes of implementing it “in the new year”.

Jenkins asked the council how it could justify the fact that seven of Hackney’s 58 primary schools in the borough have no safe crossing facilities in the streets, “when other schools in the borough have, on average, more than three”.

Cllr Young said each school was assessed individually, and that she would provide answers based on a list of specific schools.

The transport chief added that between 2018 and 2023 there were seven collisions and nine casualties in the area — eight slight and one serious.

 

Southwold parents argue that not only is dangerous driving a clear hazard, but that illegal parking obscuring the roads makes walking to and from the school even riskier.

“The council is telling people not to park in certain places to make it safer, but it’s not really being enforced,” Martin said.

The Citizen asked Hackney Council how many crossings it was planning to install near the school, how it was enforcing parking restrictions, and why there had been little action on safe crossings between June and November.

Cllr Sarah Young said: “We have previously assessed this location and at the time it did not meet the criteria for a school crossing patrol or a zebra crossing.

“However, the council recognises the concerns of parents and a design for a zebra crossing facility in Southwold Road has been submitted.

“The scheme has been progressing, with final design nearing completion, and we will update parents and the local community once the scheme has been approved for implementation.

“The council has carried out an assessment of the road safety around Southwold Primary School and has already made proposals to put in new road safety changes.”

Young said the council’s parking enforcement team was monitoring the area as usual, and that there had been “no reports” of vehicles parking on Mount Pleasant Hill and obstructing people’s ability to cross the road.

“If reports are made of any vehicles parking illegally, civil enforcement officers will be sent to review the situation.

“We always encourage members of the public to report vehicles and request enforcement as and when required. We will endeavour to action their requests and provide feedback from our visits,” she said.

Cllr Young did not respond to queries about safety inequalities between the borough’s schools.

West said FOS was grateful for the council’s commitment to look at both Southwold Road and Mount Pleasant Hill, “but we’ve been here before”.

“They hyper-specifically mentioned the cars on Mount Pleasant Hill. Why? Because general safety on the road has been raised with them tons of times, and they can’t deny that.

“This is the third cabinet member we’ve lobbied. The time for waiting is over. Action is desperately needed to protect our children.”

Hackney Council has told residents they can find more information on the reporting of illegally parked vehicles by visiting hackney.gov.uk/illegal-parking.