My Liveable London gets personal

The My Liveable London campaign has moved into a new phase - asking everyone who supports its aims to email all candidates standing in their ward urging them to respond positively to the campaign's challenge to local politicians.

In the first phase of the campaign local branches of London Living Streets and London Cycling Campaign wrote to leaders of political parties in their borough asking them to pledge to take action.

In our borough Better Streets for Enfield wrote to leaders of the Labour, Conservative, Green and Liberal Democrat parties asking them to sign up to a list of Enfield-specific pledges.  The Greens were first to respond:

Enfield Green Party are committed to making Enfield’s streets cleaner, safer and healthier for residents. We believe streets are for people, not traffic. The space has to be shared but on residential streets residents should come first. We are delighted to support the Better Streets for Enfield campaign and to pledge our support for the creation of people-friendly streets throughout Enfield.

Enfield Green Party has also responded separately to the London-wide My Liveable London campaign:

Dear Fran,

I am writing to you to confirm that Enfield Green Party and its 24 candidates in 20 of the wards in our council elections pledge to campaign for our new council to submit a high-quality Liveable Neighbourhood bid.

Indeed the creation of Low-traffic Neighbourhoods is the lead item in our Ward and Borough Newsletters (See attached copies)

Yours faithfully

Alex McRae & Kate McGeevor

Co-Chairs
Enfield Green Party

Labour also wrote back to Better Streets for Enfield:

On behalf of the Labour Party I am delighted to sign up to these commitments. All being well, on May 4th, the next Labour Administration:

1) Will seek to progress our first Liveable Neighbourhood bid to go forward later this year;

2) Will remain committed to the continuing rollout of our Quieter Neighbourhood Programme, which seeks to make our streets quieter and safer for residents; and,

3) Will continue to progress our Cycle Enfield Programme, which is about transforming our high streets and town centres, promoting more active travel, and creating safe and secure cycle lanes. We have demonstrated our commitment with practice not just words with the completion of the A105 cycle lanes and are now progressing works on the A1010 South.

No response was received from the Conservatives or Lib Dems, but on the basis of their campaigning literature Better Streets have concluded that neither party supports any of the pledges, since they both express opposition to the current Cycle Enfield schemes - indeed, the Lib Dems have gone so far as to describe them as "disastrous".

This article was edited on 25th April to correct a factual error.  The term used by the Lib Dems in their press release was "disastrous", not "catastrophic".