Sustainable School Travel

What do we do to Encourage Sustainable School Travel?

We recognise the importance of encouraging our pupils and their parents/carers to travel to and from Westdene sustainably, not only for the health benefits, but also to help improve the local environment by keeping traffic noise and pollution to a minimum during peak times. When Westdene Primary was originally built, the number of pupils who attended was significantly lower than the 700+ that we have now.

Despite the increase in numbers, the road network surrounding the school has remained largely the same and struggles with the demands of an increasing number of vehicles on the road. As a result of this, we have developed a school travel plan (available below) to inform parents and carers about sustainable travel to and from Westdene.

We actively encourage walking, scooting and cycling.

All families are asked to sign our safe sustainable travel agreement.

We encourage families to ‘Park and Stride’. By parking at Withdean Stadium and walking the 5-10 minute walk, you are helping to make the community a safer, healthier and less congested place. We have produced a Walking Distances Map (below) to encourage families to walk to school. We work very closely with Brighton & Hove City Council to improve the traffic measures wherever we can. As a school community we have suggested improvements to the traffic and congestion.

As a Healthy School, we want to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for our children and improve the transport congestion in our local community.

We are aiming to:

- increase the number of children walking to school, particularly in upper KS2.

- ensure the children have excellent road safety skills to support their walking to school.

Could you Walk to School in 5 Minutes?

The walking map below shows the average length of time that it takes to walk to Westdene Primary School from various local areas. In 2016, pupils in year 5 also developed '5-minute Walking Zone' signs which can be seen on lamposts within the 5-minute zone. You can view a full-size .pdf version here.

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