Camden provides an update on Dartmouth Park Area plans
In July 2024, over six weeks, we undertook a co-design phase for the Dartmouth Park Area Healthy Neighbourhood; our initial steps to create greener, healthier streets in the Dartmouth Park area.
We want to make the areas in and around Dartmouth Park, greener, safer and more pleasant, whether you’re on foot or on your bike. We know lots of people are worried about the health impacts of poor air quality and want to see improved road safety and reduced through traffic.
Over the past few years, we have taken the opportunity to engage with a wide range of people and organisations about possible changes including reducing through traffic, adding more segregated cycle lanes and making improvements to pavements and crossings, public spaces and the local high streets.
The feedback has been extensive with responses ranging from those in support to those who have concerns. This local insight will help us consider our next steps.
To inform the local community and stakeholders of the co-design, we hosted a Commonplace feedback webpage, distributed 13,963 postcards to all properties in the project area and installed 33 notice boards on different streets in the area to promote the engagement work.
This information shared an online survey and also invited people to participate in both online and in-person engagement events. Collectively these were attended by almost 700 people.
The online survey was completed by 1,245 people and additionally 773 project emails were received. In addition to our engagement events, we also visited 312 local businesses in the project area and held two online business engagement sessions.
Councillor Olszewski continued:
"Here in Camden, we always listen to the people who live, work and travel in an area when we suggest changes. Because of the feelings and observations you shared we are going back to the drawing board. We will take this opportunity to revisit our ideas for the area within the three-year Transport Strategy delivery plan.
“This Delivery Plan will invest more than £22m in ambitious schemes for active travel, public transport and high streets across the borough. The areas around and including Dartmouth Park are an integral part of this and we remain committed to this investment to tackle these issues.
“We are grateful to everyone who told us how they felt about our proposals, both those who spoke to us in person and those who sent emails or filled out surveys on our website. When you share your views, it really does make a difference to us coming up with ideas.
“We remain committed to investing to tackle the problems our initial proposals sought to address, and hope that residents will continue to work with us so that we can make the areas around Dartmouth Park better for local people.”
The full report of the Co-Design phase will be available later in Spring 2025.
Survey responses and engagement feedback was detailed and varied, expressing support for some elements of the traffic management plan while raising concerns about others. The most commonly raised themes in the responses are outlined below:
- Traffic and congestion issues
- Environmental and air quality impact
- Impact on local community and amenities
- Pedestrian and cyclist safety
- Public transport focus
- Cycle network and Infrastructure
- Local business impact
- Project objectives and goals