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Our parents must drive say private school heads
Row over public transport as Town Hall removes parking rights
PRIVATE schools in Hampstead at the centre of a row over traffic congestion have claimed parents will not give up the school run because they don’t want to use public transport.
They argue that bus routes are not good enough, Tube trains scare the children and parents become stressed out without their cars.
The cry came last Tuesday in the latest round of discussions over Camden’s plans to remove parking permits from the schools around Fitzjohn’s Avenue.
Residents complain the fleet of cars in the morning and afternoon – many of them bringing out-of-borough children to attend school in Hampstead – cause a log-jam in the street which would make emergency access impossible. There are more than 25 schools in the area.
The Town Hall has responded by phasing out parking permits for parents. Sarah Alexander, headmistress at the Devonshire House School in Arkwright Road, said: “We have many parents of large families with young children who live some distance from the school.
“Due to the lack of public transport there is no alternative for these young mothers to come to school. They stress they are put under by the removal of permits can only endanger the safety of their own children and those who are around them.”
Deirdre Berkery, head at Broadhurst School in Greencroft Gardens, said: “Bus use is limited by a lack of buggy space. Rush hour Tube crowds are very frightening for very small children. The children are too young to go happily on a school bus. Few parents would feel safe carrying a small child on the back of a bicycle.”
Phillip Lough, headmaster at the Hall School in Crossfield Road, added: “Many parents of young children find it simply unmanageable to use public transport in the shape of buses or the underground while they have children ‘of buggy age’.”
He said that there was “an irreducible minimum” of cars drawn to the area by the schools.
Vicky Fobel, who represents Stag Schools Travel Action Group (Stag), a group of parents banded together against the council plans, said: “Permit reduction is only effective when applied to parents who have realistic alternatives to driving available to them.”
Ms Fobel was among protesters at last Tuesday’s meeting of the council’s environment scrutiny panel – a panel of backbench councillors that review Town Hall policy.
Dr Mayer Hillman, an environmentalist who lives nearby, said: “The grounds cited by opponents of Camden’s policy stem from an assumption that many parents are locked into a position in which the location of their home in relation to the school of their choice is fixed, with the implication that it has been decided upon by other people or institutions.
“It is barely credible that these parents claim that Camden should not implement its policy unless or until it is able to provide alternatives to the use of their cars.”
The council is due to review the system later this year. |
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