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Alexis Rowell |
Independent schools bus plan ‘must arrive for free’
Subsidy warning over new proposal to cut school-run congestion
THE council has been warned that a proposal to provide school bus services to independent schools in Hampstead will only be an acceptable solution to the debate over congestion caused by the school run if it comes at no cost to the taxpayer.
As the New Journal revealed last week, the Town Hall will shortly launch a consultation on proposals that include a new 20mph speed limit in Fitzjohns Avenue, average speed cameras, and parking places for a proposed bus to serve 16 schools in the Hampstead area.
The bus proposals will be considered by the council in November and could be launched in January, using Camden Council vehicles hired by a consortium of private schools and paid for through a daily fare from pupils.
Supporters claim the bus will eradicate more than 1,400 car journeys a day.
State schools will not be included in the scheme.
Parent Marta Baschwitz, who has helped devise the scheme, said: “This has still to be agreed but I would urge people to support the project because it will be good for everyone in Camden – no more school-run stress for residents, and a much greener solution.”
Hampstead and Belsize are said to have the highest concentration of private schools in the country. The Independent Schools Council lists 14 schools in the area immediately around Fitzjohns Avenue but other estimates place the number of reception, primary, secondary and specialist private schools above 30, with more than 5,000 pupils.
Partly because parents of private school children live at a distance from their schools, the volume of school-run traffic has been a political problem for at least a dozen years.
Planners have identified four bus routes which could be piloted as early as January, picking up children in Golders Green, Hornsey and Crouch End, Maida Vale and Brondesbury, and Barnsbury and Islington. The buses would drop off on a route through Hampstead and Highgate serving 16 schools.
Luca Salice, chairwoman of the Camden Chairs and Governors Association, which represents the governors of all state schools in Camden, said the buses scheme would be welcome provided it cost Camden taxpayers nothing.
“Those people who choose to send their children to private schools do not need a subsidy, and if there is any subsidy – either in buying the buses or in running them – it is wrong,” she said. “But if the council is doing this as a business proposition at zero cost, or even making a profit, then it is a pragmatic solution to the fact that people in Camden are suffering from congestion due to the anti-social behaviour of some parents who drive their children to school.”
Yesterday (Wednesday), the council said some funds for the scheme had come from a Transport for London (TfL) initiative on road safety.
A Town Hall spokeswoman said: “The consultation will include piloting a new 20mph limit on a section of Fitzjohns Avenue for three years, which will be enforced via average speed cameras to be installed at specific locations along Fitzjohns Avenue.
“On the school travel plan part of the scheme, the proposals include the provision of bus pull-ins for a number of schools in the area which should help in reducing car-borne journeys to and from these schools, should the school bus pilot be approved.”
A survey of state schools in the area, she said, “researched the potential customer base from state schools and determined that there was not sufficient demand at this point in time”.
Belsize councillor Alexis Rowell, who campaigned for the buses in his role as the Town Hall’s official “eco-champion”, said residents would welcome the buses as a “great solution” but added a warning note: “It is not a long-term solution, it is a solution to the historic problem of private schools in Camden. The longer term solution is children going to school near where they live. It is brave of the council to intervene in what is essentially a private sector problem.”
The school run debate has a long political pedigree. In 2003, the then Labour administration introduced a temporary parking voucher scheme, handing out 6,000 permits to the schools which allowed parents to park for 15 minutes untroubled by wardens.
Built into the scheme was a condition that the number of permits would be reduced each year as alternative arrangements were found.
But each reduction was bitterly opposed by parents, and critics pointed out that there was little incentive to find genuine alternatives.
Meanwhile, the Town Hall was under fire from well-connected parents who accused them of farming revenue through parking tickets, and from residents fed up with the increasingly fraught congestion in the area.
In 2006 and 2007, residents tasked their community police team with dealing with school run infractions as their top priority, above burglaries or robberies.
The fact that the wards most affected – Hampstead Town, Belsize, and Frognal and Fitzjohns – are key Liberal Democrat/ Conservative marginals, may have added a political dimension when those parties went into coalition to run the Town Hall in 2006.
Two years ago a group of private schools and the council agreed to renewed talks on travel plans to deal with the problem. The school bus solution – though delayed – is the result.
Camden’s consultation will begin in October and involve parents, residents, councillors and “local and statutory groups”. |
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