What is Living Streets?

Living Streets is a national charity with a clear and urgent challenge to the authorities who, for decades, have allowed traffic priorities to overwhelm our local streets and public places, and failed to keep them clean and safe.

It is also a challenge to you - the person who wants to use your local streets freely and without fear, who wants to win back the public spaces from litter and vandalism and to reach local services with ease, not as someone whose family must always come second to cars and lorries.

Living Streets is a nationwide - ongoing - campaign to win back the streets for everybody. Our work in Scotland is delivered by Living Streets Scotland, working closely with the Scottish Parliament.

Everybody is the key word here! Because even motorists walk for part of their journeys. We all have local streets and local community areas that should belong to all of us, but somehow don't any more.

The Living Streets Manifesto is the battle plan to make the places we want to walk and spend time in become something more than traffic corridors or hang-outs for vandals or criminals. It can be done and the action starts right here and now.

At last - a campaign to make your local streets worth living in - worth strolling, meeting, shopping, sitting or relaxing in.

At last - a campaign to keep them clean, bright and safe for young and old, in village, town and city. A campaign that is a wake-up call for the silent majority of UK families.

What can Living Streets do for me?

Here's what we can do for you. Our liveability action chart shows the ten vital changes that must happen in a local area to create Living Streets.

What can I do?

As soon as you can, please pledge your support to our manifesto and say "Yes, I want change!"

Since 1929, Living Streets (formerly called the Pedestrians Association) has been the driving force behind many road safety initiatives and schemes such as the Walk to School Campaign, Home Zones and pedestrianised areas.

We are not party political. We are not anti-car. Drivers are pedestrians too. We stand for a better quality of life for all. We are a non-profit charity. Our only agenda is to make your local surroundings a happy extension of your home life rather than a threat that surrounds and isolates you.

When we were the Pedestrians Association, we mainly worked in partnership with local and national government agencies to run awareness-building schemes and improve conditions for the vast, silent majority who deserve a safe and enjoyable environment. The situation has now become too serious. The time has come to win back our deteriorating streets. What we need now is action.

So become part of our Living Streets campaign. Start by assessing how close your local area comes to matching our ten liveability criteria. If it fails on some or all of them, don't delay, work with us to get something done about it.

We're no minority protest group. We don't need to stage protest marches. We're the great majority. We don't have to be silent and accepting any longer. Our voice will now be heard. Together, we can achieve so much.

If you agree, please sign our manifesto.