Pupils Block London Council’s Attempts To Remove Play Space Near School
A group of students from a school in the east of London has successfully blocked the workers who had arrived to take down the school street. The parents gathered outside Chisenhale Primary School on Thursday morning to show their support for the play area with a wooden fence, trellised with plants painted in bright colors. On Wednesday night, after spotting men in hi-vis jackets and tools arriving at the site, parents and children rallied to defend it. The standoff followed a temporary victory for the families, with the second time workers from Tower Hamlets Council had come to demolish the structure following the orders of Mayor Lutfur Rahman. He wants to remove closures on surrounding roads during school pickup and drop-off times, which has divided the area, with some neighbours seeing it as an eyesore and obstruction, and other parents seeing it as an important play area that reduces pollution from car use.
Sarah Gibbons, who has been leading the campaign locally, said it was “heartbreaking” to see the removal of the school street, which could expose children to more pollution, with some children in Tower Hamlets having a reduced lung capacity because of pollution levels in the area. The current pavement in the area is narrow, and before the play area was available, there were hundreds of young children who crowded every morning and afternoon. Campaigners say that the removal of the school street has been driven by a “pro-motorist” ideology and that there has not been proper consultation over the plans. The scheme initially put in place in April 2021 by the former local Labour administration was under an experimental traffic order. Tower Hamlets’ public realm team recommended that the school streets plan should stay when the deadline recently came up for Chisenhale’s traffic order, but Rahman told them to allow the traffic order to lapse. However, parents were promised a meeting with council officials after the standoff.
According to Gibbons, the guardians expressed their dissatisfaction regarding the allocation of additional funds for wardens and crosswalks following the discontinuation of a formerly functional project.
