While we admire and support the Christmas campaigns that we see pop up in December, we also know that help is urgently needed all year round, each and every year. As some people pack away after the festive break, we are still here.
Our support is not limited to a food package, but it leaps beyond - we form connections, we listen and respond to everyone who steps through our doors. We open up a warm, safe, environment which aims to feel like a home away from home.
For us to continue to thrive and grow, and keep supporting as many people as possible, we are asking you to become a Friend of Cooking Champions. Even a donation of just £5-10 per month can make a HUGE impact on the lives of those who come through our doors.
Pop to our People's Fundraising page to donate, and we promise to keep you updated with how your support is making a difference. Thank you, we appreciate you! Team Cooking Champions
Sometimes it can take a childs-eye view to see how we can do things better, and a new competition for young budding transport planners, launched today, is intended to take advantage of this to help us speed up the decarbonisation of transport and in particular of the school run. The national walking charity Living Streets is teaming up with the Transport Planning Society to offer a prize for the best poster designed by a child of primary school age showing environmentally friendly ways to travel to school.
All of us, to greater or lesser extent, shape the world that children have to grow up in. And, without our realising it, our lifestyle and behaviour might be contributing to the problems that lead to so many children growing up obese, unfit, unhealthy and with poor mental health. Instead of blaming their parents, we should consider whether we are part of the problem.
A school street scheme comes into force on Monday 7th September outside St Paul's primary school in Ringwood Way, Winchmore Hill. Between 8.15 and 9.15 in the morning and 2.45 and 3.45 in the afternoon Ringwood Way will be a pedestrian and cycle zone between its junctions with Station Road and Shrubbery Gardens. This normally busy cut-through will be closed to all vehicles other than those with specific exemptions.
A public notice published in this week's Enfield Independent gives notice that five experimental traffic orders relating to the Fox Lane Quieter Neighbourhood Area will come into effect on 7th September.
Hal Haines draws a parallel between last week's protests against Enfield's first low-traffic neighbourhood and the situation in the Netherlands 50 years ago, when Amsterdam's streets too were dominated by cars. The Stop the Child Killings campaign that began in 1971 has shaped road design in the Netherlands ever since, making it unthinkable not to design out the possibility of taking a short cut through residential areas. The UK solved the child deaths problem by turning streets into no-go areas for children, but at a cost in terms of health, both physical and mental.
Work to create the Bowes Primary Area low-traffic neighbourhood has begun amid protests from people calling for prior consultation about the scheme, designed to prevent through traffic from using the area while retaining access by car to all addresses. Enfield Council should know next week whether or not funding will be provided for a bus gate in Brownlow Road. Haringey Council has informed residents that it is proposing low-traffic neighbourhoods in Bounds Green and in the Bowes Park area. (This article has been amended to correct information about the demonstration and the aims of the petition.)
WOW is a pupil-led initiative run by Living Streets, the charity for everyday walking. Children self-report how they get to school every day using the interactive WOW Travel Tracker. If they travel sustainably (walk, cycle or scoot) once a week for a month, they get rewarded with a badge. On average, WOW schools see a 30 per cent reduction in car journeys taken to the school gate and a 23 per cent increase in walking rates.
London's top traffic cop has reminded us that August is National Road Victims Month and asked us to watch a short film made by the charity RoadPeace. In the UK five people a day are killed on the roads and more than 60 seriously injured. Scandinavian cities, pursuing a Vision Zero policy, have almost eliminated road deaths.
Leaflets have this week been dropping through letterboxes in streets which come within the planned Bowes Primary & Surrounding Streets Quieter Neighbourhood Area - ie streets in Bowes ward west of Green Lanes and a few in Southgate Green ward that are south or east of the North Circular Road. They show the council's plans to exclude through traffic from streets in the area - one of several emergency Covid-19 Streetspace schemes in the borough that are being funded by the Department for Transport (DfT) either directly or via Transport for London (TfL).
Enfield Council's revised plans for the Fox Lane quieter neighbourhood, which were published today, will dramatically reduce traffic and associated pollution, noise and road danger over a large area of residential streets stretching from Palmers Green to Southgate. Subject to approval by the deputy council leader, the proposals will be implemented on a trial basis for six months starting this summer.