Project Background

Following earlier engagement with the community on our plans for a new Healthy Neighbourhood in St Johns and Tanners Hill, we're consulting on our proposed interventions, designed to make it easier for residents to live healthier, more sustainable lives. 

We would like to understand the views of the public on our proposals to help us decide how we should implement our scheme.

Why here?

St Johns and Tanner’s Hill is the highest priority area in our Healthy Neighbourhoods programme. This follows work completed in 2024, which saw us score areas across the borough against measures including road injuries, through traffic, air quality, asthma, obesity and deprivation. We also considered how well a scheme would work, considering public transport access, how likely people are to walk or cycle, car and van ownership, and school travel plans.

Too much traffic on residential streets

As part of our preparation for a Healthy Neighbourhood scheme in St John’s and Tanner’s Hill, we conducted traffic counts in January 2025. Half of our count locations within the St John's and Tanner's Hill area saw 1,000 vehicles a day pass, which is considered too high for cars and cyclists to share the road safely. We also found that lorries made up more than 5% of traffic at all 27 locations. All 10 roads we counted around the edge of the area carried more than 5,000 vehicles a day.

The results above suggest that a significant number of non-residential journeys are being made on roads that should primarily be used by residents living in the area.

Why this matters

This is a residential area with four schools, with many children walking to and from them. A significant number of households in the area don’t have a car or van, and many people are reliant on walking, cycling and public transport. Between July 2019 and June 2024, 44 injury collisions were recorded on streets inside the area, and of those collisions, around half of the people injured were either walking or cycling, highlighting the need for a new Healthy Neighbourhood scheme to improve the experience for residents walking and cycling across the area.

How we heard your views

In late 2024 and early 2025, we held a programme of early engagement, talking to local residents, stakeholders, organisations and councillors to understand local travel habits, priorities and ambitions, that helped to inform the overall design of the scheme.

What you told us

More than 150 people shared their views in our earlier engagement, and told us they wanted better air quality, lower traffic, safer crossing points and better cycling infrastructure, to create a healthier area to live. On site walks with councillors, we also saw lorries using residential streets as shortcuts, narrow pavements and excessive traffic on routes that children use to walk to school.

What we want to change

The proposals aim to make St Johns and Tanner’s Hill safer, healthier and greener to live, work and travel in. They do this by reducing through traffic on residential streets, making walking, wheeling and cycling easier, and improving access for disabled people and other vulnerable road users.