How the schemes work

When we develop proposals for local areas, we will let residents living there know about the proposals before we install them. This is to gather their feedback and to raise any potential issues or ideas they may have before we finalise the scheme.

To reduce traffic levels and make streets safer, proposals could include introducing new crossings, trialling the closure of through routes to vehicles by using large planters or bollards to restrict access at certain places, tightening junctions to reduce traffic speeds and introducing School Streets that mean people can't park outside schools at pick up or drop off times.

By using planters or similar changes to restrict vehicle access at key points on some streets, we can reduce the number of vehicles using local streets and ensure through traffic uses more appropriate main roads.

Every home and business in the area would still be accessed by vehicle. This means that people living there, taxis, delivery drivers, refuse trucks or emergency vehicles would still be able to access every property.

Making these changes will help to create safer, cleaner and greener neighbourhoods. This can have a big impact on tackling air pollution, reducing congestion, improving residents’ health and wellbeing and increasing safety on residential streets.

Working with schools

We’re also working with schools to improve safety for children getting to and from school with the introduction of School Streets, which restricts cars stopping outside schools at the start and end of each school day.

Working with the emergency services on our proposals

The emergency services are always consulted and feed into the design of all schemes to ensure that emergency vehicles will continue to have access to all properties.

It is important to note that when attending an emergency, all blue light services stick to main routes and only access residential streets closest to the property they need to get to. This is due to the speed, size and weight of the vehicles when attending an emergency. This is a key part of their training.

Trialling changes to local areas

Once the changes are implemented on a trial basis, we then have a six-month public consultation for people to tell us whether the changes should be made permanent, and whether any other measures are needed to make it work better.

We know there will be things we can improve or need to change which is why we make changes on a trial basis. This means that people can try out the changes and give us their views before we a decision on making them permanent.