Hackney parents have called for urgent action on road safety after vandals cut down traffic signs outside a local school.
The Metropolitan Police is investigating reports of criminal damage to street signs near Simon Marks Primary School on Cazenove Road, received just after 5pm on Monday 9 November. No arrests have been made.
The signs, which enforce traffic restrictions during school drop-off and pick-up times, were brought down when vandals cut through them with power tools. The attack has reignited parents’ fears that the residential streets around the school have become “lawless” due to dangerous driving and “disgraceful parking”.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) visited the scene on Tuesday morning and spoke to residents as parents arrived at the school gates pushing prams and dropping off their children.
‘Absolutely terrifying’
Local parent Kelly Allnutt described her school run as “absolutely terrifying, anxiety-inducing, cortisol level rising horrible”.
“I’m not expecting a country walk to school, that would be silly. But this is ridiculous. My son can’t get across here on his bike […] Everyone’s honking their horns, there’s so much anger, and just a complete lack of acknowledgement for anybody else,” she said.
Largest programme in the UK
Under its School Streets programme, Hackney Council has installed pedestrian and cycle zone signs at the entry and exit points of designated zones outside schools. The schemes were introduced to make streets safer for walking and cycling and to cut air pollution.
According to the government, Hackney has the largest School Streets programme in the UK, with 50 active schemes. A report adds that timed road restrictions now cover 87 per cent of the borough’s primary schools, “benefiting 20,000 pupils”.
Repeated attacks
Council data shows the schemes are backed by most Hackney residents. But School Streets infrastructure across the borough has come under repeated attack, with camera wires cut, signposts severed and speed-monitoring strips damaged.
The latest attack appears to imitate the so-called ‘blade runners’, who used power tools to cut down ULEZ cameras when the charging zone was expanded across London in August 2023.
A Freedom of Information (FoI) request revealed 22 reported incidents of vandalism to School Streets infrastructure across the borough between June 2024 and March 2025. The council has recorded a further 13 incidents since then.
Resident Will Petty, a member of campaign group Low Traffic Hackney, told the LDRS that School Streets were “quite uncontroversial” compared with other traffic restrictions in the borough, which also has the most low-traffic neighbourhoods in London.
“They only operate for a few hours each day and are explicitly there to protect kids. So when something like this happens, it’s horrible. You don’t know who’s done this, but you wouldn’t do this unless you had a very specific interest in driving down this road,” he said.
Parking problems persist
Residents said that despite the restrictions, the road is still plagued by “countless” illegal parking and traffic offences. The council’s own data maps show a cluster of problem-parking reports on streets around Simon Marks and other nearby schools.
Resident Bekki Wiltshire said she makes sure her daughter walks the long way round to the school to stay safe. “She’s responsible. The drivers aren’t.”
Long-time resident Tom Albu said he had stood on the corner with road safety officers several times. “Their jaws have dropped. Yet there has been no significant change,” he told the LDRS.
A local lollipop man, who asked not to be named, said: “It feels as if I’m the sheriff of a lawless town.”
Dangerous roads ‘not inevitable’
Cllr Jacob Cable, cabinet member for climate, clean air, energy and transport, said the council would not be deterred from bringing “cleaner air and safer streets” to Hackney.
He said: “While this vandal has shown that some in our society continue to prioritise cars over keeping children safe, we absolutely reject the idea that toxic air and road danger are an inevitable part of life, let alone childhood.”
Following repeated vandalism of a fixed CCTV camera enforcing the School Street, the council is now using a mobile CCTV van to patrol the area, and says it will step up those patrols.
The Met is asking anyone with information to call 101, quoting CAD 5560/09NOV26.
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