Barking & Dagenham

Barking and Dagenham has, over the four years the Scorecard has been reporting, fallen lower and lower down the table of overall scores, from 25th in 2019, to 26th in 2020, 29th last year and now second lowest at 32nd place.
Looking at new data published this year to reflect population density, Barking & Dagenham scores lower than it should, when taking account of its density. When we account for housing density, Barking & Dagenham would currently expect to achieve an overall score of 3.5, double its overall score of 1.7.
Over the last year Barking and Dagenham has introduced more School Streets, where traffic around schools is restricted at arrival and departure times, which is good news. The proportion of schools with School Streets increased from 8% in 2021 to 15% in 2022. However, other measures to improve conditions for pedestrians and cyclists are still lacking. The area of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) as a proportion of total area suitable for LTNs remains at very low 5% (compared to 70% in leading borough Hackney) and the borough has yet to introduce borough-wide 20mph speed limits and parking is controlled on fewer than a third of streets, even though parking controls reduce traffic and make streets much safer, and even though a number of boroughs now control parking on all roads.
We were unable to update Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) data this year however Barking and Dagenham told us they have introduced new CPZs (15 since 2020) which is great news and we hope they will introduce even more in the coming year. Improvements will be reflected in next year’s scores.
Barking and Dagenham has an average of 82 cars per 100 households, higher than the London average of 73. The borough also scores high for the proportion of cars that are highly polluting (from exhaust emissions). Car ownership needs to be reduced in the borough, where the proportion of trips made by car is high at around 40%. It would be good to see solid plans from the Cabinet Member for Public Realm & Climate Change, Kashif Haroon, for the measures needed to meet the Mayor of London’s Local Implementation Plan target to reduce car trips to 28% of daily trips by 2041.
The Healthy Streets Scorecard combine scores for nine indicators to create an overall Healthy Streets score for each borough. See the graph below for 2022 results (includes 2019 – 2021 results for comparison). For more detail visit the London-wide overview of the 2022 results. You can also:
Scorecard (factored score) chart explained
In the chart above, each borough has been given a factored score. Factor scores are composite variables which provide information about a borough’s placement on a scale. Factor scores are given by F=XB, where X is the indicator normalised score for a borough and B is the factor score coefficient (or weight). Each indicator is weighted as 1, or 0.5 if there are two parts to one indicator, for example Modeshare has a weighting of 1, Active travel – walking has a weighting of 0.5 and Active travel – cycling has a weighting of 0.5. The borough’s total factored score is the sum of all indicator factored scores which is then factored to 10 (multiplied by the number of indicators/10) to give a value on the scale between zero and 10. We can then compare boroughs against each other on the scale.
See your borough’s LTNs – and all LTNs in London in the London LTN map
For results analysis visit Low Traffic Neighbourhoods indicator results
Instructions for map (below)
To navigate the key, click the top left hand corner.
To open in a new window, click the top right hand corner.
Zoom in and out using the + and – buttons.