School Travel Plans
An introduction to school travel plans
The Department for Children, Schools and Families require all schools to develop a school travel plan. The London mayor has set a target for all schools to produce a travel plan by 2009.
Harrow's sustainable School Travel Plan and Home to School Transport Strategy was updated July 2009.
A summary of this plan is also provided.
The increase in school run traffic, impacts on the risk of accidents to children, contributes to traffic congestion and air pollution and is also detrimental to children's health as well as to the local environment.
For a school travel plan is to be successful, all parties involved in the running of the school need to have ownership of the plan, including governors, teachers, parents and pupils. This means that all parties need to be involved in the formulation and progression of the travel plan.
School travel plans enable individual schools to promote walking and cycling and to put forward ideas and solutions to reduce car use. In doing so they highlight issues that may discourage walking and cycling and raise awareness of other travel initiatives that can benefit the school and the local community. The plans are an opportunity for the council and the school community to work together to address school travel related issues.
School travel plans are an essential part of the council's strategy to tackle issues related to school transport. School travel plans will frequently involve an element of engineering works required to improve the safety of the street environment for the school children, as well as the promotion of initiatives to increase the number of school children who walk, cycle or use public transport to get to their school. When school travel plans are approved by both the council and transport for London, the council is able to apply for additional funds to address school travel issues in and around the school.
If you want to encourage your school to develop a school travel plan, or your school needs help in developing their school travel plan, the council's school travel advisor can help.
To help keep people up to date with the latest developments and opportunities regarding school travel plans, we send out a newsletter to schools that are developing or implementing their school travel plan approximately once a term.
School Travel Plan newsletters
Road Safety Office
020 8424 7592
