Stockwell Gardens Healthy Neighbourhood Timeline

What is changing in the area?  

We want Stockwell Gardens to become a Healthy Neighbourhood. A Healthy Neighbourhood is a welcoming place where people can move safely through the streets because there is very little motor traffic, and cars travel at safe speeds. It’s a place where the streets are enjoyable and attractive, enabling people to live more active lives and making walking, wheeling, scooting, and cycling convenient, pleasant, and the preferred choice whenever possible. 

Why was the Stockwell Gardens neighbourhood selected? 

We looked at all the neighbourhoods in Lambeth and studied key factors to figure out which areas would benefit by becoming Healthy Neighbourhoods. The answers helped us make a scorecard that clearly showed which neighbourhoods we should focus on first. 

We considered factors such as: 

1. How much motor traffic travels through the neighbourhood? 
2. How good are public transport options nearby? 
3. Is the area more or less deprived than average? 
4. Are essential facilities like schools and parks available locally? 
5. How healthy are local people today? 

Stockwell Gardens was selected as somewhere that could benefit from Healthy Neighbourhood improvements as we know there are existing issues with motor vehicles using the residential streets as through roads. We believe these improvements will reduce traffic volumes, improve road safety and air quality and create a more pleasant environment for walking, wheeling, scooting, and cycling. 

Stockwell Gardens Healthy Neighbourhood Goals 

Healthy Neighbourhoods seek to deliver:

1. All roads within the area meet the Healthy Route quality criteria for motor traffic flows, and are protected from through traffic now and in the future

2. An overall reduction in motor vehicle movements across the area, when considering main roads and the internal area together

3. An increase in the proportion of sustainable kerbside and active travel infrastructure.

In addition to these success criteria, all Healthy Neighbourhood interventions should enable the efficient movement of all users on the main road network in line with the council’s duties under the Traffic Management Act 2004.

Why are things changing? 

The way we design our streets influences how people use them. In Lambeth, we want to make it easier to walk, wheel, scoot and cycle. When people choose to travel actively, this helps us all live healthier lifestyles and is more environmentally friendly. Our transport system needs to be equitable and fair, and we prioritise these values in our decision making. 

Making streets safer and travel fair for everyone 

In our borough, 60% of people don’t own a car, and in some areas, it’s even over 70%. Despite this low car ownership, our roads are among London’s most dangerous, making it unsafe for many to walk, wheel, scoot, or cycle. Lower-income households face a higher risk of serious accidents, highlighting the unfairness in road safety. Lambeth’s Road Danger Reduction Strategy aims to address this issue by making our streets safer for everyone. It focuses on “safe by design” principles, keeping speeds low and ensuring dangerous behaviours don’t lead people getting hurt when using our streets. 

Similarly, Lambeth's Kerbside Strategy addresses how we use street space. On most streets, the "kerbside" is primarily occupied by parked cars, which is neither fair nor efficient given that most people in Lambeth don’t own a car. By reimagining this space, we can create streets that reflect Lambeth’s diverse communities, make walking, wheeling, and cycling easier and more enjoyable, and offer welcoming public spaces for the community and businesses.

Improving our health and the environment 

Noisy traffic and polluted air make it harder to stay healthy and travel actively. Transport emissions, mostly from motor vehicles, make up nearly a quarter of the borough’s total emissions. Alongside that, a third of car journeys in London are under 2km, with 60% made by just one person. Many of these trips could be replaced with healthier, greener options like walking or cycling. Reducing traffic will ease congestion, improve bus reliability, and improve air quality over the long term. 

Adding exercise to our daily routine is one of the best ways to improve our health. If Londoners walked just 20 minutes each day, over 25 years we could prevent 85,000 hip fractures, 19,000 cases of dementia, and more than 18,000 cases of depression. By switching to more active ways of traveling, we can become healthier and make our environment cleaner. 

Lambeth’s Climate Action Plan, adopted in 2019, aims to cut vehicle journeys by 27% and increase walking, cycling, and public transport use by 85%, as part of our commitment to reach Net Zero by 2030. In practice, this means Lambeth is committed to reducing 110 million miles of driving each year. This means more people will need to use buses, walk, cycle, scoot, or wheel, so these options must be easy and work well together. 

The Healthy Streets Approach 

The Mayor of London’s Transport Strategy follows the Healthy Streets approach.  

This approach is about making the city a place where people can live active, healthy lives. It focuses on putting people and their health first when making decisions, encouraging everyone to drive cars less and use public transport or walk, wheel, scoot, and cycle more. 

Lambeth’s Transport Strategy sets out how we will build a transport network that can be used by everyone, has a positive impact on our quality of life and the environment, and helps us deliver more homes and jobs, ensuring long term sustainability. 

As part of delivering on the Transport Strategy, Lambeth had developed the 2024 Healthy Neighbourhoods Plan. This plan has three main programmes that work together to make sure all streets in the borough become safer, easier to get around, and more enjoyable for everyone. These programmes are called Healthy Neighbourhoods, Healthy Routes, and Healthy Main Roads. 

We have made great strides in reducing traffic and speeds through our neighbourhoods using the Low Traffic Neighbourhood approach. Reducing traffic and speeds is simply the first step in creating local areas that empower more people to live healthier and more active lives. Healthy Neighbourhoods take this further.   

Our guiding principles for Healthy Neighbourhoods are: 

1. Fit for the future - Our Healthy Neighbourhoods program will help create streets where we can live healthier lives, reduce emissions, and adapt to climate change. 
2. Tackling health inequality - We aim to make streets safer and healthier for everyone, especially those most at risk on our roads, including children, older people, and people from lower-income households. 
3. Creating change now - We must act quickly to address climate and public health challenges, using well-planned trial projects to create positive change now. 
4. Public transport and active travel together - We need people to be able to move around our borough sustainably. This means providing for both public transport and active travel in our journey towards healthier streets. 
5. A borough wide approach - As we introduce Healthy Neighbourhoods across Lambeth, we will plan and monitor carefully, considering all forms of travel, to ensure we maximise the benefits, and manage any negative impacts.