The word on the streets

It is also a barometer for other issues in a recent survey conducted by YouGov for Living Streets.

The state of our streets is a window on people’s relationships with place. A third of British adults (34 per cent) agreed that they would walk more in their local area if the streets were kept in better condition, while more than a fifth (22 per cent) said that they would be likely to do more of their shopping locally.

Yet budgetary constraints are putting front line street scene services under increasing pressure, and Living Streets, the national charity that stands up for pedestrians, is launching a new programme of work to make the case that the state of our streets is now more important than ever. Living Streets, with mutual support from partners such as English Heritage and Civic Voice, has long campaigned for better designed streets, with more community involvement and less clutter. With budgets stretched to the limit, Living Streets is also lobbying the Government to ensure that councils have the powers they need to keep streets up to scratch on a day to day basis, particularly to take decisive action on street works and obstructions in streets. The charity is also publishing a State of our Streets policy and good practice paper to support councils in giving pedestrians a fair deal, making statutory budgets go further and working with communities to improve services.

Common Problems
Though everyone notices poorly kept streets – only 5 per cent of people surveyed did not notice any of the common problems cited on their local streets – we already know that obstructions and uneven pavements affect older and disabled people most acutely, while young people are disproportionately affected by the poor perceptions of personal safety which accompany run-down streets. Strikingly, the YouGov figures show that 46 per cent of 18-24 year olds and 51 per cent of 25-34 year olds would walk more in their local area if the streets were safer and more attractive – following on from a recent ICM poll showing that 30 per cent of 18-24 year olds are deterred from walking by feeling unsafe on their streets.

Beyond the immediate value of safe, attractive, enjoyable streets, there are broader questions for the role of local authorities in providing place leadership. Street management can make or break a council’s reputation: as pointed out by the Local Government Association, residents’ satisfaction with street cleaning is a better predictor of overall satisfaction with the council than all other universal council services put together. In the last of the Best Value Performance Indicator analyses conducted by the Government a few years ago, a third of people identified street and pavement repairs as the thing that ‘most needs improving’ in their area – more than the number citing crime or health. According to LGInsight / Populus figures, four in ten people are actively dissatisfied with pavement maintenance in their area.

Counting the cost
The direct financial cost to councils of badly kept streets, meanwhile, is significant. To take one example, According to Freedom of Information data obtained by Guide Dogs and quoted in the Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme’s recent Pothole Review, to which Living Streets contributed, British local highway authorities paid out over £106 million in compensation claims for trips and falls on footways between 2006 and 2010. These figures did not include local authorities which did not respond or compensation claims from that period which have not yet been settled, and it is estimated that the true figure for all British local authorities is likely to be closer to £300 million. Meanwhile, the Local Government Association has claimed that poor quality reinstatements of streets after utility companies carry out street works cost councils around £70 million a year.

With more than three quarters of short journeys under a mile made on foot according to the latest National Travel Survey figures, the quality of streets is everyone’s concern. With budgets and public trust both under strain, councils will need to harness that concern in order to improve. Many have taken steps to improve reporting of problems: for example, Southampton City Council has incorporated the award-winning Fix My Streets online reporting system into its own website, making it easier for members of the public to submit reports, while the London Borough of Hillingdon has involved over 4600 people in its Street Champions scheme, looking out for issues.

Reporting Problems
However, reporting is only a small part of the issue. Living Streets’ YouGov poll revealed that most people were confident with reporting problems on streets, with council websites (41 per cent) or phone numbers (33 per cent) being the most popular methods. Far more significant was how people felt about making a report. While a significant proportion (21 per cent) did note that they might not report a problem because of not being sure how to do so, more (26 per cent) stated that they didn’t feel their council particularly encouraged them to report problems – and over a third (35 per cent) said that they might not report problems because they didn’t feel it would make a difference. Young people aged 18 to 24 were by far the most likely to feel that there was no point in reporting problems on their streets, with 50 per cent giving this as a reason why they might not report a problem.

A closer look at some groups which the public sector may have traditionally struggled to engage with hints at the scale of the communications challenge facing councils. More than half of full time students stated that they would walk more in their local area if streets were safer and more attractive (52 per cent) – but students were far more likely than average to ignore problems Maintenanceon streets rather than reporting them (29 per cent). Meanwhile, unemployed people were more than four times as likely as the average to state that they might not report a problem on a street because they didn’t feel it was their job to do so (17 per cent).

It’s clear from this that while easy to use and well-publicised methods of reporting problems on streets are important, they are not enough: people need to feel that their feedback is being taken on board. This well-worn principle is easier to state than to put into practice, but given their immediacy, street scene issues are an ideal place to start. Stoke on Trent City Council, for example, decided to place more trust in the public when they submitted reports of potholes, sending a maintenance crew straight out to address reported problems rather than scheduling an inspection first. In over 90 per cent of cases the public report was accurate, allowing the council to save money and time on inspections while responding to problems quickly.

A quick reaction
A key challenge for councils, particularly at the moment, is balancing the need to react quickly and visibly in this way with the benefits of longer-term, preventative maintenance, as highlighted in the Pothole Review. This is where an awareness of streets as places for people, rather than just corridors for cars, can help councils coordinate activity across departments and make statutory budgets go further towards improving streets, rather than just maintaining them. The London Borough of Hounslow has taken this approach to new levels, drawing on approaches developed by the Centre for Transport Studies at University College London to assess the characteristics of different parts of the street network and classify sections of road according to their role as ‘links’ to facilitate movement or ‘places’ to spend time. The results are used to design management and maintenance regimes that meet local needs whilst being realistic to deliver.

The operational challenges that this area of work presents are considerable – but there are also opportunities. Notably, in light of the impact of street quality on people’s likelihood to engage in physical activity, there is the potential for to link public health commissioning more closely with spending on streets when local authorities take on public health functions next year. Living Streets’ State of our Streets project will emphasise that this doesn’t need to mean grand schemes, but is just as much about working with communities to make statutory budgets go further and create safe, attractive, streets, where people want to walk.

About Living Streets
Living Streets is seeking case studies to inform its national lobbying work and a policy and good practice paper to be released later this year – councillors, and professionals are invited to contribute at
www.livingstreets.org.uk/stateofourstreets