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As we all know, one of the great attractions of living in the Alexandra Palace area is ready access to lovely green and blue spaces, not least Ally Pally Park. But that’s not the case for all Londoners, many of whom live in rather desolate, nature-deprived areas.

The capital is also facing serious environmental challenges, including filthy rivers and increased urban heating and flooding. Shockingly, one in eight London properties are at high or medium risk of surface water flooding – twice the rate of the national average.

We need leaders who will protect Londoners and deliver a better future for people and nature.

In May 2026, Londoners will head to the polls. The decisions taken by borough councils will shape the future of our green spaces, rivers, wildlife, and neighbourhoods. You have an opportunity to help influence our future decision-makers.

A petition launched by the More Natural Capital Coalition, an alliance of environmental charities working together to influence policy in the capital, contains 10 environmental pledges. These set out practical and achievable actions that candidates and existing councillors can adopt to protect nature, clean up rivers, and improve access to green and blue spaces.

The coalition is asking all Londoners to sign and share the petition which asks candidates to commit to the pledges to improve the environment in their boroughs. By signing the petition, you can show candidates how much support there is for strong action to protect and improve London’s natural environment. 

You can sign here by clicking on this link. 

This page contains more information about the important work of the More Natural Capital Coalition, which is convened by CPRE London. It also includes a link to a very useful webinar hosted by the coalition and which clearly explains the 10 pledges, giving examples of projects in various London boroughs that have successfully tackled some of London’s environmental challenges.

As Alice Roberts, Head of Campaigns at CPRE London, said in her concluding remarks at the webinar, ‘These elections really do matter’.

Photo of my favourite tree in Ally Pally Park, near Go Ape.

It looks like some kind of peace deal might be on the horizon for Gaza. Whatever happens, Palestinians need so much assistance to keep going and then one day rebuild their lives. They face a long and weary road ahead, but we can be there for them and help light the way.

Even if a peace deal comes about, it’s still worth staying engaged with what is happening, keeping an eye on how it’s all going. Lots of details need to be worked out. So, if we don’t like what we see, we can write to our local MP, sign petitions, go on marches, attend vigils and support charities. Ideally, the Palestinians will one day determine their own future without the help of others. 

When we look back on this period, maybe we can say we did something to help. I have read that there are approximately 51 million adults in the UK aged over 18 and over. Think of what could be achieved if 51 million people took advantage of living in a democracy. That’s a lot of letters to MPs! A lot of signatures on petitions! A lot of people on marches!

So, what am I doing?

I have been on a vigil with Women in Black, have signed numerous petitions, have donated to Oxfam’s ‘red lines’ campaign, written a short blog about Gaza vigils for this website, and am running my own fundraiser for Medical Aid for Palestinians.

Because of my interest in flowers, the fundraiser is based on an Instagram page that features photos of posies. It’s called A Posy for Palestine.

So far, the posies have been created by me, friends, family, neighbours, and members of gardening groups. Where possible, I have provided information about the flowers that have been picked for the posies. Occasionally, I comment on an issue, such as the deaths of journalists reporting on what is happening in Gaza. You might like the posy that I created for the journalists who have died – see the pink germaniums in an inkwell.

A fundraiser like this on its own can only make a small contribution, but it makes me and Team Posy feel a bit less powerless, and it’s raising money for a great charity that can help Palestinians on the ground. As the writer Arwa Mahdawi wrote in an article for The Guardian, lots of good changes have come about because of small acts of activism. She’s right.

If you would like to create a Posy for Palestine, then message me via this site or my Instagram page. It would be lovely to hear from you.

Arwa’s article (entitled ‘Please don’t succumb to hopelessness over Palestine. Your voice can still make a difference’) appeared in The Guardian on Tuesday 2 September. If you have time, do look at the posy of yellow roses, Verbena bonariensis, and Hidcote lavender that I created for her.

Link to Instagram page, A posy for Palestine: https://www.instagram.com/aposyforpalestine/

Link to my JustGiving page https: www.justgiving.com/page/annabel-rutherford-aposyforpalestinefundraiser?utm_medium=FR&utm_source=EM

Finally, I realise people are always being asked to donate money to good causes, so a very small donation would be very welcome. If you don’t feel able to donate, liking the photos on the Instagram page and sharing the page would be great. Simply talking about Gaza with friends and family and taking steps such as signing petitions is another way to show support.

Thanks very much!

 Ado/Annabel x

This week, I was lucky enough to attend the Unearthed Exhibition at the British Library. It was brilliant. The exhibition’s final day is Sunday, 10 August. Anyone interested in the history of gardening and how we garden today should try to go. It’s a wonderful mixture of beautiful botanical illustrations, ancient texts on herbs and flowers, displays of gardening equipment, and video installations, including 'Pollinator Pathmaker'. Created by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, it’s ‘a one-of-a-kind, interspecies artwork’.

I also enjoyed learning about the contribution made by black gardeners, women and other cultures to the development of gardening, as well as the Coco Collective films about their community garden in Lewisham, south London. Allow at least two hours to see everything!

As the blurb for the exhibition says, ‘Unearthed reveals how gardeners have cultivated more than just plants – they've sown the seeds of change.

*The photo to this blog shows a still of the Pollinator Pathmaker installation.

This session is for all abilities,  and tends to be two Saturdays per month during term time at Rhodes Ave Primary School . There are some practicing artists and designers who join purely to work from the figure (and ignore me!), others who are novices or havn't drawn since school.  Each week I run through short poses with various exercises to widen your vocabulary of skills and techniques and then move onto a longer pose.  Drawing is like a muscle... just needs regular practice.  This class has been set up due to the popularity of the class that runs earlier in the day.

Please contact me with any queries. £96 early bird

A team from Lotus descended on some garages behind Alexandra Park Road yesterday with a little modified Austin 7, which turned out to be a replica of the original Lotus Mark 1. They were celebrating 75 years since it was built by Colin Chapman in one of these same garages, owned by his girlfriend's parents. Their son and daughter are pictured, about to set off on a repeat of its maiden trip to Dunstable Downs in Bedfordshire. Quite a long way, given a maximum speed of 25-30mph! They got down the hill from the garages with no problem, hope the rest of the trip went ok ...

Below that is a photo of Colin's wife Hazel in the original Lotus Mark 1, in front of the same garages, in 1948. She apparently took over the building of Marks1 and 2 (also in these garages) when Colin was away at work in the Air Force, and was also a racing driver herself and an astute businesswoman.

Here is another APN post back in 2017 on the early history of Lotus in Haringey.

 Credit: Classic Team Lotus

                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Dunstable Downs

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Estorick Collection in Canonbury Square, just a few minutes walk from Highbury and Islington station. It is a lovely place to visit and has six galleries over three floors plus a cafe with tables in a quiet garden area. The Estorick Collection is housed in a Grade II listed Georgian townhouse overlooking Canonbury Square, and it opened in 1998 with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. There is a permanent collection of Futurist works as well as figurative art and scupture dating from 1890 to the 1950s, plus an exhibition programme. On show at the moment are works by Luigi Pericle, an artist who had fallen into oblivion but whose paintings were rediscovered as recently as 2016. If you have an hour or two to spare, I highly recommend a visit. Even better if you can fit in a walk around this beautiful neighbourhood, which is full of interesting buildings, garden squares and the charming Compton Arms pub too.

Hops ready to be picked for the Wood Green Hopping Brew Day at the Goodness Brewery, this afternoon, Sunday18 September.

Local growers contribute their hops, which are picked only shortly before brew day because the 'green hopped' pale ale is brewed while the hops are still fresh. Dried hops are used for most other ales, lagers and beers. The hop plant is supplied by the brewery, and anyone can join in!

Harvesting the hop bines. This plant only produced 0.5 kg this year - last year the crop was four times the size!

Picking the hop flowers off the bines in the sun. They smell glorious! (Supposed to be good for insomnia if you put them under your pillow).

The ale will be available to buy in cans later in the autumn, while stocks last! Owen's Food Store in Alexandra Park Road N10 stocks it (together with other beers from the Goodness Brewery) - anyone know of other stockists? Or you can of course go to the Goodness Brewery itself, Coburg Road, Wood Green, to try it with optional pizza. It may also be available on tap at the Goodness and at pubs such as The Prince on Bounds Green Road. We really like it!

Yesterday evening at the All Good Bookshop - artists making evocative sounds with strange instruments, film, poetry and story-telling. The idea - described by our MC and theremin (what?) player - came from the outrageous Cabaret Voltaire: Zurich 1916, where artists got together to work out what they should still say while the world burned in the First World War. The question remains relevant.

The acts used projections, music and words in various combinations which are not easy to describe! Dramatic visual effects in one, comic in another. The show finished with a lovely and pointed creation myth from South American mythology, with glances at most other world traditions thrown in. A fascinating and hugely enjoyable evening.

The whole festival is budgetless and done for the love of it and deserves lots of support. You can still catch all sorts of quite different events today and tomorrow - see: https://haringeyartsfestival.com/arts-festival-events

The Witch of Brussels performs Big Ass Strawberry

Newham Folk Archive start their history of highway robbery, cattle rustling and sewage in East London.

Interval drinks at the bookshop

On Tuesday evening the Friends of Broomfield Park hosted a marvellous performance of Shakespeare's 'Tweflth Night', with added songs and dances, by the Three Inch Fools theatre group. There were 5 of them (I think - wasn't easy to tell) playing far more parts than that, often with quick costume changes on stage, and lots of cross-dressing within the cross-dressing theme in the play - meaning the right clothes had to be in the right place around the 3 little stages they were using. Not just good comic acting, but good singing and playing - some not at all Shakespearean.

If you get a chance to catch them, they are great fun to watch, but they seem to travel half-way across the country from one day to the next for their gigs - always outdoors. In the winter they do cut-down Shakespeare in schools.

The nearest they'll come again this years looks like Knebworth on the 15th June.

We went on a lovely walk in Hertfordshire last Friday, and thought others might be interested in it. It was a very easy trip on the train - almost empty - from Ally Pally station to Welwyn (it takes ½ hour, and they generally run every ½ hour weekdays and weekends – though check for cancellations). At this time of year there is so much vegetation that you would think you were in the countryside all the way.

Welwyn station is in the middle of the town, so we stopped for a cup of coffee before making off into Sherrardspark Wood (through the central rectangular gardens surrounded by shops, and onto Russellcroft Road, turning right into Handside Lane and crossing Bridge Road before entering a short footpath into the wood on the left).

The birdsong that greeted us in the wood was like a dawn chorus in Ally Park - our Birdnet app for identifying song, often so useful, was totally confused, and not helped by the background noise of the A1(M) on the other side of the wood! The route over the motorway (the old Great North Road) was via a small road which takes you immediately into the picturesque village of Ayot Green (first picture below). Once a Wesleyan centre (mostly artisans), it now looks like a wealthy neighbourhood.

Taking the lower footpath up to Ayot St. Lawrence (see map above), we went through quite a few wooded areas, where the bluebells were almost over. The pictured  hedgerow is next to the old railway (the Ayot Greenway), which can if need be protect you from the weather (of any sort), but on that warm, sunny May day we took the path on the other, sunny, side (the Hertfordshire 'greenways' are mostly quite shaded). Then turned right under the bridge which carried the old railway (see map above). Next to the photo of the bridge is one of the old railway, and then a view from it.

Walking on up the main footpath, we reached a short stretch of road leading to Ayot St. Lawrence, passing Shaw's Corner on the left. Once the home of Bernard Shaw, it now belongs to the National Trust, and has a lovely garden. The house has been left as it was when he last lived there. We didn't stop here since we had visited it before (on that trip we heard a cuckoo). We passed the old, ruined medieval church - it's not often you see a ruined medieval church in the UK, particularly one with a tomb monument with the remains of two reclining figures. And on to the Brocket Arms for lunch and a taste of Brocket ale (this area all used to be the Brocket estate).

It took roughly 2-2½ hours to walk there, with stops along the way. The footpaths and bridlepaths are very well marked, but there are quite a few more than are shown on the Openstreetmap above, so it was helpful to have the OS Explorer map for St. Albans and Hatfield, which includes a mobile download.* There were occasional polite notices saying 'Sorry for any inconvenience ...', about 800 runners would be using this route for their annual 10k run on 22 May, Obviously a route well-used by walkers!

Returning to Welwyn, we took the upper footpath shown on the map above, mostly through open fields. The larks soared above huge fields of broad beans (no beans in the field shown in the picture!), which seem to be a speciality of farmers in Hertfordshire. I gather almost the entire UK crop is exported to the Middle East, where they of course make much use of fava beans. Most greengrocers here don't sell them fresh any more - I remember as a child taking them out of their lovely furry pods - though allotmenteers of course still grow them!

We saw some splendid red kites (or maybe several sightings of the same one), and a small bright yellow bird with a narrow beak perched on a fencepost. Maybe a yellow wagtail, as the book suggests, not long arrived here from Africa? There was no water near, so not a grey wagtail. We didn't see it wag its tail, mind you!

At Ayot St. Peter's cemetery (see map), we turned off the small road that we had joined, and into the Ayot Montfichet estate, through a very splendid gate. Well, not quite - the footpath sign directed us through the little door shown in the photo, and round the other side of the gate. The centre of this estate is an old 15thc house (Ayot Place - see map), now let out to various organisations, but we couldn't see it from the footpath, which curves round to the left of it. 

We then retraced our steps through Ayot Green, since there is no other route nearby over the motorway, and back into Sherrardspark wood. The simplest route here is to go along the old railway, which carries on through the wood. Alternatively, there is a signpost in the middle of the wood (with some small sculptures) giving various alternatives.

In Welwyn, there was time for tea before getting the train back (only a few people on the train although it was rush hour - though we were going in the wrong direction for commuters from London). 

 * This OS map includes footpaths to the west of Hertford and Bayford too (on the other railway line from Ally Pally) - although both stations are themselves just off the map. It can be ordered online from the Ordnance Survey.

Hi APN

First of all happy Xmas and New Year to you all. And wishing you all a better 2022. This too shall pass…

I am sure a lot of you will remember David Rennie of Crescent Road (now living with his daughter in Southend) who created the Water Game, which he ran for many years at the Palace Gates Summer Fete and Fins Feste (plus others).

About a year ago I completed a film about David and his invention. It was uploaded on to Youtube and a website for it was created (see links below). Anyway, I just wanted to give you all an update as to what has happened with the film because as you will see, it has been quite eventful.

Films by their very nature are big and loud, they are made to be seen by as many people as possible, and not hidden away in a cupboard somewhere. So, after it was shown in the community, the next challenge was to find a new audience to tap into the very positive messages behind the Water Game film.

I started by using David’s Green party background and contacting groups throughout the UK, asking them and their members to watch the film, discuss it and generally spread the word. That worked for a bit but it was a lot of effort for a small amount of new viewers.

But then I started thinking about film festivals and the fact that the green, educational and quirky message within the Water Game film was truly international, especially once foreign language subtitles were added to it.

So that is what I did. Below is a map of the countries holding film festivals that the Water Game was submitted to. The beauty of the film festivals is that if it gets selected (which is a big IF as some festivals get around 3,000 plus entries) it get shown for a period either in a cinema or online.

And we have had some success. Semi-finalist in Stockholm and California. And Finalist in a French and Turkish Film Festival. And in the months to come hopefully some more. 

It’s also been translated into several languages – French, Spanish and Turkish (thanks to the Istanbul International Architecture and Urban Films Festival).

Finally, it also recently won an award. A Golden Copernicus at the 12th Educational Film Festival Edukino in Warsaw, Poland.

https://www.edukino.pl/index.php

And as I said, it is still going around festivals and spreading the word.  In fact on Boxing day it’s going to be shown on Brighton’s local TV channel and soon hopefully on Sheffield’s local TV.

If you are intrigued by the film and have not yet seen it

You can watch it on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUhDwlLCMEk&t=19s

If you like it and want to support it, please subscribe to the Youtube Water Game channel and maybe leave a comment – as this helps promote it on Youtube and attract new viewers.

There is also a supporting website: www.watergame.co.uk

Many thanks.

JM

This slim, larger format book is very well produced, like all Hornsey Historical Society's books, and well illustrated with maps, portraits of the bigwigs involved, and landscape paintings. There is a list of all those receiving land allocations at the end, with an indication of the locations of the plots. The advert in the right column of this website gives a link to the HHS webpage, with more details.

Although many of us don't live in quite the area covered by Hornsey Historical Society's new book, the historic parish of Hornsey, we are familiar enough with most of it, and it tells us quite a lot about the development of the district. The book gives a very detailed account of the terms and effects of the enclosure act requested from Parliament by the Hornsey Parish Vestry in 1813, to privatise the commons in the parish, and also the areas of 'waste' along the edges of roads and other public ways: any spaces not in the ownership of an individual or public body, but where some sort of right of ownership could be claimed by property owners or their tenants.

In those days what is now Alexandra Ward was in the parish of Tottenham. A quick glance at the catalogue of the Metropolitan Archives suggests that Tottenham never had a general enclosure act, since the parish vestry went on authorising individual claims for enclosures through most of the nineteenth century.

An enclosure act involved a survey of the commons and of the property of people who claimed to have rights to its use. Not everyone did, and the rights were usually attached to a piece of local land, or a tenancy. David Frith starts the book with something of a mystery: why did they bother with this act? The amount of common and waste land in the parish was very small by comparison with most places which imposed comprehensive enclosures. Creating a Private Bill wasn't a free service and in this case it was much more expensive than most, which reduced the profit to the recipients of enclosed land, since costs were covered by sales of some of the land rather than simply giving it away. In the Hornsey case, the local survey covered not just the property of those with a claim to the land being enclosed, but all property holders in the parish. This made it more expensive to do, but also gives an excellent record of the state of property ownership throughout the parish at that time in the large map that was made by the surveyors. It's scale is 26 inches to 1 mile, making it 11 feet (nearly 3.5m) long.

The areas of common and woodland in Hornsey parish, 1813

(adapted from 'The Hornsey Enclosure Act')

The book includes some picturesque colour extracts from the original map showing the main built areas in Hornsey High Street, Crouch End, Muswell Hill and Highgate. The amount of building at the time was small, but the map shows what contemporary paintings don't, which is how many small plots of land were owned by individuals even in the absence of a house nearby. All sorts of small pieces of land were also distributed by the enclosure act, especially along roadsides where the land was not yet private, making the patchwork of ownership even more intricate.

The commissioners who implemented the act also defined some new roads, such as Saint James's Lane, whose main purpose seems to have been to give access to out-of-the way plots created by the enclosure. The main roads were either already there, or being built at the time - like the Archway Road: one map shows a considerable area of land belonging to the Archway Road Company just north of the Archway bridge, presumably acquired for something other than road building.

While most of the roadside land was enclosed by the act and given to nearby properties - the right to graze cattle on the roadside was abolished by this - the act specifically forbids enclosing of the roadside land along Hornsey High Street and Priory Road, which is why they remain as wide as they are. This was done "at the request of several respectable inhabitants ...conceiving that, if those pieces of waste were enclosed, the beauty of the village would be entirely destroyed".

David Frith asks what interests were really served by the enclosure act. The parish contained two manors: Hornsey Manor and Brownswood Manor. The lords of these manors were both senior clergymen: the Bishop of London (Hornsey), and an official of Saint Paul's Cathedral (Brownswood), but the land was mainly leased to tenants, the largest of which was Lord Mansfield of Kenwood, whose leases included Coldfall Wood, Dirthouse (Cherry Tree) Wood, Brewhouse/Gravel Pit (Highgate) Wood, and Churchyard Bottom (Queen's) Wood. The enclosed land was allotted according to the size of a landowner's or tenant's existing holding, so those with most got most (on the grounds that they would have been making greater use of the commons). The weight of wealth was also felt in the passage of the act. Approval or objection to its terms was measured not by the number of people who supported or opposed them, but by the total value of the property each side represented. In the end £181 12s 10d objected, £923 16s 7d approved. There were £85 16s 10d worth of abstentions.

Large landholders might benefit from increased rentals, or increased agricultural production (most people in the parish still worked in agriculture, and the main crop was fodder for the horses which provided London's transport). But the many small parcels of land handed out would not be very efficient in these terms, and one would guess smaller owners would have had a fairly large say in the workings of the parish vestry. Housing development was not at that time really on the horizon, arriving only 30 or so years later. The author thinks the most likely explanation is the property interests of the Church, who wanted to get their holdings tidied up in preparation for the expected loss of income from tithes (the local tax which supported the Anglican churches and their clergy) which had become extremely contentious by this time. They were abolished 20 years later, but the issue was already live.

There are two questions it would be nice to have much more on. One is the composition of the Hornsey Vestry committee at this time - and who might have had influence on it. The other is what the state of the land market was at this time, whether for housing development or anything else. There was a massive European war on in 1813, and parts of the economy were booming. Asa Briggs says "Landlords benefitted from high rents and tenant farmers from wartime prices." It would be interesting to know whether this prosperity was encouraging speculation by those who had the resources - those who did not were hit by high prices and increased duties on everyday goods which paid the costs of the war.

The enclosure act did not completely neglect the poor: land was put aside for use by the poor law guardians for relief benefits (some even for cottages which did not get built), but exchanging the ability to gather free fuel on the common, or graze an animal, for hand-outs administered through poor relief would only increase poor people's dependency and bring them under greater control. All David Frith's judgements in the book are very measured and cautious, but he concludes with a nod towards (he says) "E.P.Thompson's obloquy, 'Enclosure (when all the sophistications are allowed for) was a plain enough case of class robbery...'." I expect there are many more insights and issues that will be suggested by this interesting piece of research for those with local knowledge.

For a wider background of the history of enclosure, try this article - interesting and amusing (and not unbiased).

A group of seven oak and hornbeam trees in Coldfall Wood, an ancient woodland and nature reserve, are threatened with felling.  Find out more and sign the petition here ....https://www.change.org/p/haringey-council-protect-ancient-woodland-from-felling-by-insurers

The prospect of going back to work on public transport – used in normal circumstances by most working people in AP, I believe – must be daunting  for many as we come out of lockdown, and not only for those who are in some respects vulnerable, or who have vulnerable relatives at home. With TfL limiting passenger numbers to 15% of the usual volume, how are all these people going to travel? And there'll be more parents joining the commuters in a couple of weeks time as primary schools re-open.

Reclaiming Crescent Road during the lockdown (see also video of partying at the bottom of this post):

Driving would seem to be the safest option with regard to Covid-19 for those who own a car (so not an option for over half of Haringey residents). Cycling is another option – for the intrepid – but the lack of 'whole route' cycling infrastructure in Haringey, and the volume of traffic, are major deterrents to potential cyclists (count me among that number). Thus a massive shift to driving seems likely, resulting in traffic gridlock and more air pollution which, apart from other evils, helps spread C19. We need other means of safe travel, as well as trying not to lose the healthy streets that we have enjoyed for the past few weeks. 

Photos of Crescent Road pre-lockdown: two lines of traffic confront each other, an altercation between drivers, motor vehicles claiming the pavement

Government proposals and statutory obligations

The Government and Mayor of London are only too aware of the dangers of increasing the rate of infection via public transport, as also of creating gridlock – witness the extraordinary announcement on May 9^th by Grant Shapps that local authorities in areas with high levels of public transport use (Haringey is the third highest in the country) would be required to take measures to reallocate road space to people walking and cycling … as swiftly as possible, and in any event within weeks (statutory guidelines), and that some funding would be available. The Mayor also issued guidelines and promises of funding with his Streetspace scheme, and has been closing roads in the City. The proposed measures, apart from pavement-widening, focus on the introduction of temporary cycle lanes on main roads, and low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) in residential areas, to create both alternative means of transport, as well as street space for walking and exercising while maintaining physical distancing.

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods

So what are LTNs? These block through-traffic by such measures as the use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition Cameras, which allow certain categories of motor vehicles through -  e.g. buses, emergency vehicles, Veolia trucks, disabled drivers, the milkman – and not others, including motorcycles. Residents' vehicles may be included amongst those that are exempt, but if they are not, they will sometimes have to drive a little bit further to get to their houses than in un-filtered roads. The ANPR camera on the street lamp in the picture (below) of a 'filtered' road (Orford) in Walthamstow will record the registration number of any vehicle which is forbidden from driving through, and fines will be collected by the local authority (unlike fines from speed cameras, which go to the police).

The design of the LTN has to ensure that traffic is not simply rechannelled from one residential road to another in the neighbourhood. If this is achieved, then some of the traffic is expected to evaporate. It is not like water in a pipe, which has find a way out - people make choices, and some of these choices - at least for the 40% of urban car journeys that are less than 2 miles - will be to walk or cycle instead of driving. And the more some people do this, the more others will too - it may be slow, but is cumulative.

An LTN benefits both pedestrians and cyclists, making the neighbourhood an altogether pleasanter and healthier place to live in. Shops also benefit from increased footfall, although shopowners often assume (as did those in Orford road) that the lack of motor traffic will be detrimental to their businesses.

Cycle lanes and LTNs make good combinations because research has shown that providing cycling infrastructure on its own will not be successful in persuading most people to take up cycling.[i]

LTNs make an area slightly less attractive to drivers and more attractive to cyclists, nudging the former towards alternative means of travel. Cycle routes could then consist of temporary cycle lanes on main roads, interspersed with temporary LTNs ('temporary' meaning up to 18 months) in residential neighbourhoods.

In the current emergency, more temporary measures may be used than ANPR cameras, such as planters and gates to block roads. It will, however, provide an unprecedented opportunity to try out new approaches to traffic management, and hopefully may lead to more permanent measures.

Proposals by Haringey Council

The plans being developed by the Council are not public as yet, though an article in the Ham&High indicates that they are creating east to west and north to south cycling routes, and that LTNs are lower on the agenda. Contrast this with the much more advanced programme in Lambeth, who are seeking to appoint an LTN Programme Lead who will co-ordinate the introduction of LTNs in different neighbourhoods.

Our MP has been talking to the CEO of Haringey Council about implementing an Emergency Transport Action Plan, asking for an unprecedented level of action on our streets without delay.

Working with other neighbourhoods

As our roads gradually fill up again, more commuters who would normally come into London by rail from beyond the north circular may also choose to drive – many coming through our neighbourhood – rather than run the gauntlet of public transport.

This through traffic does not just affect our own neighbourhood (here I am referring to the Palace Gates neighbourhood, which I am familiar with - Dukes Avenue, Alexandra Park Road N10 and Muswell Hill less so, but contributions from residents of this area would be very welcome!). Much of it is the same as that taking a short cut down Winton Avenue before crossing Durnsford into Crescent Rise and Crescent Road, then exiting from our neighbourhood over the Buckingham road railway bridge, it carries on to add to congestion on Hornsey Park Road, Wightman and the Ladder roads, and on into Islington and Hackney. Many of these neighbourhoods have their own campaign groups (often under the umbrella of Haringey Living Streets) to try and reduce rat-running and increase safety for cyclists and pedestrians. Should we start our own, and work with these other groups to pressure the Council to do more to restrict through traffic, making cycling a more viable option for local people, and our neighbourhoods healthier, safer and more attractive places to walk?

The introduction of 'Low Traffic Neighbourhoods' in some areas would thus benefit some other neighbourhoods nearer central London, while possibly causing problems in others. So it is essential that we work with other groups to suggest measures to the Council that will increase benefits and reduce negative impacts for all. We are not traffic experts, but residents are likely to be the most knowledgeable about local conditions in their neighbourhood.

Reducing the number of motor vehicles is of course a key climate issue, with transport now accounting for more emissions in the UK than the entire energy sector - a quarter of the total - and cars being the worst offender.

[i] S. Melia, Urban Transport without the Hot Air (2015), pp. 224-6 and chap 7.

 photos and video courtesy of Tom Pigott-Smith and Gudrun Parasie

Celebrating lack of traffic on Crescent Road during Lockdown: