Making streets safer can improve quality of life, writes Tony Armstrong, chief executive of Living Streets. Streets are the one public service we all use everyday. How well designed and managed our streets are has a huge effect on many other aspects of our lives – from how much regular exercise we take, to whether we feel safe using our local shops and amenities. Living Streets is a national charity, working to bring our streets to life by encouraging people to walk more in people-friendly public spaces. We strongly believe that this cannot be achieved at arms length, and it is our work with local residents, and local authorities, which often has the biggest impact on people’s lives. The introduction of the new set of national indicators for local area agreements, which give councils the ability to choose their own local priorities, has allowed third sector organisations to work out ways that we can help councils to achieve their most pressing aims. In many ways it seems set to streamline the relationships between charities like ourselves and the many local authorities we work with, as we highlight areas of shared concern. We think that small-scale, local projects, designed to improve the standard of our streets and encourage regular walking, have a significant role in meeting many of the most popular performance indicators.

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22 October 2008
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