Better Transport

Campaign for Better Transport researched some Home Zones and found out the following important points for a successful Home Zone campaign.

Get a champion within the local authority
This is preferably a project officer, community liaison officer or housing officer who remains with the project from inception to completion to ensure continuity, be a point of contact for residents and other stakeholders, and keep the pressure on within the authority in terms of funding and resources. It needs to be somebody who is able to bring together all the complex issues. Northmoor, Magor Village and Morice Town Home Zones have all had someone in this category. The Home Zone projects that have experienced the most difficulty have not had a consistent project manager from within the council from the inception of the project.

An independent facilitator is key
This is preferably somebody who already has experience of using varied community participation approaches and who is able to build up and maintain a good rapport with the local community, stakeholders and authority. A company or individual who lives/works close to the proposed Home Zone area is also preferable, so they can be on site regularly and become part of the community. A facilitator can draw out of people what they want and what their concerns are, and feed this information to architects and engineers. While some community architects have acquired additional experience in community involvement, it is doubtful whether the average person traditionally trained as an architect or engineer would have the skills to be able to fully engage the community and reach consensus on what they want. Northmoor and Sittingbourne Home Zones have used housing associations to facilitate community participation with great success.

Strong local groups make all the difference
Of great campaigning benefit is a group of residents or tenants who are able to accurately represent the views of the whole community and relay information to and from the community. The members should be keen to work in partnership with the facilitator and authority. The Methleys and Ealing Home Zones were championed by local residents’ groups. In the Methleys the group did much of the initial facilitation and consultation with wider residents and in Ealing the group has been involved in aiding facilitation. Plymouth City Council set up a residents’ advisory group, consisting of residents and other stakeholders and this proved to be an excellent go-between for the authority and community and helped to alleviate mistrust about the authority. Within the advisory group were some key champions of the Home Zone.

Using different consultation processes to reach different sections of the community has shown to be effective. In Northmoor, for example, a young person’s advisory group was set up. Attending existing groups such as toddler groups in the community ensures that people, such as mothers with young children, are involved who may find it difficult to go to meetings at other times.

Address people’s concerns
The most pressing concern for residents is almost always parking. They want to be able to park near their home and stop non-residents parking in the street. Controlled parking zones can overcome parking problems and should be discussed very early on, while taking into account both the possible costs and design implications that they have. For example, some parking services teams insist on yellow lines everywhere in controlled parking zones, which could ruin any Home Zone.