Cleaning up the walk to school
St Stephen’s CE Primary School is situated off Colville Drive in Bury. Due to an ongoing issue of sewage flowing at surface level, the side gate entrance to the school was closed to pupils and families.
Colville Drive was also experiencing traffic congestion during drop-off and pick-up times, restricting access for residents and posing a danger to pedestrians. Here's how Living Streets stepped in to help.
WHAT WE DID
St Stephen’s CE Primary School has been taking part in WOW – our walk to school challenge since September 2021.
In June 2022, we carried out a School Route Audit where we were joined by pupils, parents, residents and school staff to identify potential improvements to the local streets.
The key recommendations included resolving the sewage/foul water issue as a priority, along with tackling congestion on Colville Drive and addressing fly tipping/littering issues along the route.
We raised the concerns with United Utilities and our contacts at Bury Council, resulting in the sewage issue being investigated and then resolved in November 2022, with the school able to re-open its side entrance.
WHAT'S CHANGED?
- Sewage gone and side entrance reopened
- Fly tipping and littering we reported cleared
- Zig-zag lineage to be repainted
- 'Park and Stride' launched in November 2022 after the school gained permission from the local pub to use their parking facilities.
Which has led to...
Car journeys decreasing and walking rates increasing! Data from our WOW Travel Tracker for the autumn term showed that the share of journeys to school that were car journeys taken all the way to the school gates was down 34.8 percentage points on baseline data, with a 5 percentage point increase on journeys walked or wheeled all the way.