School travel plans

Road safety engineering

The school travel plan process often raises questions or concerns about road safety. In this section, you will find information about casualty data for the Royal Borough, as well as information about the process of requesting a road safety improvement near your school.

Child (under 16) road casualty data

During the last three years (2015-2017), there have been 78 child road casualties in Kensington and Chelsea. None proved fatal, 2 children were seriously injured and 76 were classified as slight in severity.

This total of 78 is about 3.4 per cent of all road casualties in the borough for those three years.

  • 40 were pedestrians (2 serious and 38 slight)
  • 3 were vehicle riders (all slight); all were cyclists
  • 35 were vehicle passengers (all slight); 13 car occupants, 19 bus/coach occupants, and one taxi, motorcycle and van occupant
  • 25 of the child casualties were reported to have been pupils travelling to or from school; 14 pedestrians (2 serious and 12 slight), one cyclist (slight) and 10 vehicle passengers (all slight, 9 bus/coach and one car)

*Absolute changes in the number of reported serious, slight and all injuries during 2017 partly reflect improvements in the reporting of injury severity by the police and the introduction of online self-reporting. These changes are expected to provide a better assessment of injury occurrence and severity but have made data collected from November 2016 onwards difficult to compare with earlier data.  

Engineering improvements

Engineering improvements are prioritised where patterns can be identified from all the reported personal injury collision data over the latest three years, especially collisions classified by the police as speed-related, average daily 85th percentile speeds over the 30mph speed limit and/or material change in conditions such as the creation of cycle routes. The Royal Borough is responsible for improvements on borough roads, and Transport for London is the highway authority for the London Priority (Red) Routes: the A4, the Earl’s Court One Way System, and Chelsea Embankment.

Measures that have been introduced following requests from schools are the installation of School Warning signs, School Keep Clear markings (to try to eliminate parking outside schools in order to help pedestrians crossing roads) and repaving of footways close to schools.

Requesting improvements

Specific measures can be requested in the School Travel Plan via the issues log and while each request will be considered, engineering improvements will only be progressed if they meet the criteria above.

Last updated: 23 February 2023