New Malden School Street: Six Roads, 8am and 2.45pm

Six roads around Coombe Girls’ School in New Malden would be closed to most motor traffic twice a day under a School Street zone approved by councillors on Wednesday night.

The New and Old Malden Neighbourhood Committee backed the scheme at Richard Challoner School on 9 September. It did not approve it in the form officers asked for.

The roads in the proposed zone are:

• Darley Drive
• Buxton Drive
• Bakewell Way
• Cromford Way
• Matlock Way
• Branksome Way

The restriction would run 8am to 9am and 2.45pm to 3.45pm, Monday to Friday, in school term time only. It would not operate at weekends or in the holidays.

The committee changed the route to get there

Officers recommended putting the zone in straight away under an Experimental Traffic Management Order, the same instrument Kingston used for its two current trial School Streets, with authority delegated to the Director of Highways, Transport and Regulatory Services to settle the details. Their report said the scheme should start “as early as possible within this financial year”.

The committee resolved something else. Its decision is that a permanent School Street zone be approved to proceed to local public consultation, and that the results come back to a future meeting for a final decision on whether to implement, modify or abandon the scheme.

The practical difference is order and reversibility. An experimental order puts the restriction on the ground first and consults while it runs, for between six and eighteen months. Consultation first means nothing changes on Darley Drive until residents have been asked and the committee has met again.

Anyone who thinks the decision was wrong has until 5pm on Wednesday 23 September to call it in, and would need 582 residents of the New and Old Malden neighbourhood to do it. Signatures have to be on paper to Democratic Services or through the council’s own petitions portal; the council will not accept them gathered on any other website.

Why the school asked

Officers visited Coombe Girls’ on 14 January and recorded what they found there plainly. With the whole school arriving and leaving at once, they wrote, “senior staff are currently forced to divert from internal school management to traffic control duties, creating a significant safety risk”.

The report puts the number of students arriving and leaving simultaneously at 1,200. The Department for Education’s own register records 1,500 pupils on roll at the school, an 11 to 18 secondary academy on Clarence Avenue.

The headteacher, Emily Barns, asked for a comment to be printed in the report:

“We are shining a light on the problem and showing our willingness to the trial to see if the school street removes a source of tension and improves safety, and with the ultimate aim of encouraging greater use of methods to come to school other than being driven in.”

Officers were candid about why they drew the zone so wide. Restricting only the road outside the gates does not work when drivers cannot see the gates, so the zone reaches roads where “the school entrance remains out of sight for approaching parents”.

One caution about the paperwork. The council’s report calls the main road “Darnley Drive” three times and “Darley Drive” twice. There is no Darnley Drive in New Malden. The street outside the school is Darley Drive, KT3 3AS.

The scheme would be enforced by Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras, which is how Kingston polices its other School Streets, and residents inside the zone would have to register their vehicles. Exemptions run through the council’s permit portal, operated by APCOA, and the equalities assessment names three groups they exist for: residents or pupils with a disability, restricted mobility or SEN needs; residents who need daily support from carers who drive; and residents who are pregnant or have recently given birth. The cost would come out of Kingston’s Local Implementation Plan grant from Transport for London.

Separately, Councillor Sillett has petitioned for traffic calming on Buxton Drive, Clarence Avenue and Mount Pleasant Road. Officers say they will look at whether permanent structural changes are needed once the School Street zone has been assessed.

South Lane gets its zebra crossing

The same meeting settled a longer argument on the other side of New Malden. A zebra crossing will be built on South Lane outside number 261, “subject to the necessary statutory processes”, and officers have programmed the work for December.

It is the third location the council has tried. Crossings near the Millais Road junction and outside number 243 were both dropped after what officers describe as significant local objections.

The consultation on the 261 site ran from 13 May to 10 June and went to 115 households. Thirty-four replied, a response rate of 30%. Of those:

• 22 supported the crossing and 12 opposed it, with nobody undecided
• 19 said they were unhappy with the current crossing situation, 8 were happy and 7 were neutral

The two objections officers took most seriously were about the tree and the noise. The design has been changed in response: a kerb buildout means no tree will be felled, and the Belisha beacons will use directional light shields to keep the flashing out of bedroom windows. The crossing also gets extended zig-zag markings and high-friction surfacing on the approach.

Objectors argued the real problem on South Lane is speeding off the A3, not a shortage of crossings. The council’s own data is more equivocal than either side might like. Speeds of up to 24mph were recorded near the Millais Road junction, on a road with a 20mph limit, consistently across the day. Five years of collision records show seven collisions in total, of which three were on South Lane itself and were all slight; the rest were at the South Lane, Malden Way and A3 junction.

London Fire Brigade, the Metropolitan Police and TfL Buses all told the council they had no objection, provided the design meets standard. South Lane carries the K1 bus.

£11,590 to five local organisations

The committee also approved five Neighbourhood Community Grants on Wednesday:

What it means for you

• Nothing changes outside Coombe Girls’ yet. The next step is a local public consultation, and the council has not published its dates. Watch Kingston Let’s Talk, where the council’s traffic consultations are run.
• If you live in the zone, the exemption is the thing to know about. Residents inside a Kingston School Street register their vehicles through the parking permit portal. Carers and one-day visitor exemptions exist too. Kingston publishes the rules on its School Streets pages.
• The deadline that matters this month is 23 September, 5pm, for calling in either decision. It takes 582 residents and the grounds are limited to five, including that a decision is inconsistent with established policy or missed a material consideration.
• On South Lane, expect works before Christmas. December is the officers’ programme, not a fixed date, and it is still subject to statutory notices.
• Our Kingston roadworks and travel page tracks live closures across the borough, and Kingston planning news follows applications.

Sources

• New and Old Malden Neighbourhood Committee, 9 September 2026, Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames. The resolutions and the call-in deadline are from the printed decisions; the roads, hours, ANPR enforcement, equalities assessment, funding, site visit, headteacher’s comment and the petition are from the report “New School Street Zone Scheme - Coombe Girls” by the Director of Highways, Transport and Regulatory Services.
• The consultation figures, the three candidate locations, the design changes, the speed and collision analysis, the emergency service responses and the December programme are from the report “South Lane - New Zebra Crossing” to the same meeting.
• Get Information About Schools, Department for Education, for Coombe Girls’ School’s roll, address, age range and headteacher.
• The street name was checked against OpenStreetMap address data: Darley Drive, New Malden KT3 3AS exists, and no Darnley Drive is recorded in New Malden.