Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of reducing speed limits around schools.

Responsibility for highway management, including the provision of school streets and the design, installation and maintenance of pedestrian crossings, rests with local traffic authorities. The Department is working with stakeholders to develop guidance to support local authorities that wish to introduce School Streets schemes.

Local authorities need to consider local factors such as presence of schools, pedestrian numbers, road layout, traffic flow and speed and accident records in deciding whether a crossing is necessary, and if so what type to provide. The Department has published guidance on the assessment and design of pedestrian crossings, in Chapter 6 of the Traffic Signs Manual. This is available to download from: www.gov.uk/government/publications/traffic-signs-manual.

The Department published a comprehensive three-year evaluation of the effect of 20mph signed-only limits on 22 November 2018.

Active Travel England is providing revenue and capital funding to England’s local authorities to plan and deliver active travel interventions, including School Streets.