A Bit About Us
CleanAir4Schools is a collection of parents, clean air experts traffic experts and lawyers from numerous schools and nurseries in Stoke Newington. Our campaign team includes parents from St Mary's, William Patten, Grasmere, Newington Green Primary, Shacklewell Primary and Stoke Newington High School.
We have run numerous air quality campaigns, were guest speakers at the Unicef Air Quality Rally in Hyde Park and took our pleas for cleaner air at schools all the way to Parliament.
Our Manifesto
We are calling for an action plan for reducing pollution for Hackney’s children.
Children’s lungs are especially vulnerable to the effects of poor air quality. Exposure to high levels of air pollution can bring about asthma and seriously stunt lung growth. And yet we ask them to run around, breathing deeply, in playgrounds that are illegally-polluted. Collectively we owe them a better legacy of their schooldays.
Achievements
Campaigns wins so far
Representing Hackney Parents at the House of Commons. Members of the group represented Hackney parents at a Clean Air Parents Network event with MPs, arranged by Client Earth, and attended by many MPs including Ed Milliband. Although invited, unfortunately Diane Abbot was unable to attend.
Speaking to Sadiq Kahn on BBC London radio and subsequently at clean air events at City Hall, to express concerns about bus stops outside school playgrounds. This resulted in discussions with our group, the GLA Head of Air Quality and TfL about possibilities for removing stops, which are still ongoing.
Petition for no more pollution at schools – we drummed up support from over 800 signatories from whole community in just four days – church, mosque, residents, schools – and presented our petition at the full council meeting in Feb 2018. As a result of our petition, Mayor Glanville pledged there would be: “no increases in pollution at schools in Hackney”.
Identifying that Hackney had put the wrong figure for the estimated traffic increase past schools in their Walford Road consultation. Their own data spreadsheets (which they sent to us on the final day of the consultation) estimated it at 30%, but in their consultation document, they stated 5-7% increase. Six months after first emailing Hackney about it, they finally conceded they’d got it wrong and started new traffic modelling in July. This got us in the news.
Parents and children from the group attended the UNICEF Clean Air rally at Marble Arch in 2019.
Who We Are
Our Roots
The group was originally set up by a group of parents at William Patten school in Autumn 2016 to look at ways to reduce pollution at the school. As the years have gone by, many of the issues we are campaigning for will have an impact borough-wide, and so we became Clean Air for Schools and have joined forces with parents from other schools, including St Mary’s School, Grasmere, Stoke Newington High, Shacklewell Primary and Newington Green Primary.
Many children are also actively campaigning in the group, by producing posters, low pollution maps, taking part in protests, writing letters themselves to councillors and politicians (and getting a reply from the Mayor of London!) and telling their parents why they need to choose low pollution routes / not take the car.
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Our Future Plans
Some of the things that we will be doing over the coming year include:
Talking to Cllr Burke and Mayor Philip Glanville about pressing pause on the road closures.
Campaigning for the ULEZ together with the Clean Air Parents Network, and pressing for further measures that would benefit the borough, e.g. road user pricing, expansion of EV parking points, school streets for schools in the area.
Working with children to produce no idling signage for parking areas outside schools / traffic queueing at junctions next to schools.
Continuing discussions with the GLA air quality team and TfL to look at options for moving bus stops outside schools. We are currently discussing with them how the needs of commuters in London should be weighed up against the needs of pupils at polluted schools (March 2019).
