Update 18th March 2021

Please find below an update on a number of aspects of the Bowes Primary and Surrounding Streets Quieter Neighbourhood.

Public Consultation closing Sunday 2 May 2021

• In addition to the ongoing monitoring activities we are undertaking to understand the impacts of the trial, we continue to review feedback received about the scheme. The consultation survey has been open since the 28^th September 2020. An external company is analysing the feedback and will be providing a report summarising the feedback received.
• The opportunity for comment was originally intended to last for 6 months, however we have extended this period and intend to continue to take comment up until Sunday 2^nd May 2021.
• Whilst we continue to review the data during the feedback period, closing the survey for comments will provide a period of time for our external consultants to prepare the report and for the Council to then review this to inform the next steps for the project. The Council is anticipating the publication of next steps report in the Summer of 2021.

Public webinar Thursday 18 March 2021

• An online public webinar will be held Thursday 18th March 2021 from 6.30pm to 8.00pm. Letters, emails and posters have been distributed and social media posts have been made to advertise the webinar.
• The first part of the webinar will be an opportunity to hear from the project team about the monitoring and evaluation plan, consultation and engagement activities, and the Equalities Impact Assessment. Following this we will host a question and answer session to listen and respond to issues raised by residents.
• The webinar will be recorded and available to watch after the event.

Engagement with people with disabilities and carers, and Equalities Impact Assessment

• A particular focus area for us over the next few months is engaging specifically with members of the community with disabilities, representative groups of people with disabilities, and carers. We have contacted Blue Badge holders directly with a further survey to gather more insights. We also directly contacted those who completed the consultation survey on this page and identified as having a disability, receiving care assistance in their home, or as a carer. The feedback collected will inform our ongoing Equalities Impact Assessment and be considered alongside feedback collected through the main consultation survey and other monitoring activities when making decisions on the future of the scheme.
• This survey is open until the 31^st March 2021. We are looking to arrange focus groups with residents which will provide a further opportunity to discuss feedback on the scheme in greater depth. We are currently working through how these may look given Covid-19 restrictions.

Project documentation and project page updates

• We have made several updates to this project page. The main body of this page has been updated, and we have also reorganised the Document Library and FAQs (found on the right hand side of the page) to make things easier to find.
• Four new documents have been uploaded to the Document Library. These provide information on the rationale of the scheme, communications and engagement activities, our approach to equalities, and how we are monitoring the scheme.
• The information aims to provide some context around the activities we have been carrying out over the past months since the scheme was implemented. They also set out the information which will be used to inform future decisions about the scheme.
• We have also renamed all the documents so they are listed in the order in which they were first published to make it easier to read through and find them. All files that were previously uploaded remain on the project page.
• We have added a number of new FAQs. All FAQs have been placed into subfolders which we hope makes finding a question you might have easier.

Next Steps

• Explore with Haringey whether there are opportunities for a wider area approach that crosses Borough boundaries. This work will include consideration of how the proposed Bus Gate for Brownlow Road is incorporated into a wider area plan.
• Develop a report which will set out the feedback received from residents and other stakeholders and provide an update on the outcomes of further monitoring completed as traffic starts to return to ‘normal’ (as lockdown restrictions are eased).
• This report will be reviewed by elected members who will use the detail of the report to inform their decision making. This report is expected to be published in Summer 21 and its recommendations will be dependent upon the circumstances at that time, particularly in relation to the Covid-19 crisis.

Other updates in the Bowes Primary Area

You may be aware Enfield Council has advertised the intention to install electric vehicle chargers in lamp columns on a number of streets in Enfield as part of a trial. Whilst this project is being managed by another team in the Council, the combination of a range of initiatives will contribute towards achieving the aims of strategies such as the Climate Action Plan and Health & Wellbeing work. Details of this can be found at this link(External link).