Lightfoot helping fleets to navigate new School Streets

In London, more than 400,000 drivers a year are fined for entering School Streets, and with the Government planning to expand the scheme, this is something all fleets need to be aware of.

For some time, we’ve seen many of the fleets we work with having to manage their operations around School Streets. The scheme sees vehicles banned from certain roads at times when children are travelling to and from school, with the aim of making these streets safer and greener.

Penalty charge notices (PCNs) are issued to vehicles that enter the roads during these times, carrying fines of up to £130. There are currently around 700 School Streets in London and 200 in the rest of the UK, with the Government intending to roll out many more across England.

This poses significant challenges for businesses and drivers, and Lightfoot has been working with our customers to help them avoid fines whilst ensuring these roads stay vehicle-free.

Where a School Street is known to the fleet, our technology can send alerts to fleet managers to let them know if a vehicle has entered the restricted road, helping our customers to manage compliance and keep fines to a minimum.

Similarly, we can also provide reports showing which vehicles are regularly entering School Streets, providing fleets with information on which vehicles may need to be registered for an exemption.

Our fleet management software also shows the location of vehicles at different times, helping fleets to dispute erroneous fines if the need arises.

Commenting on this, our Client Services Director Ben Bax had this to say: “Lightfoot’s coaching technology means that drivers are driving more safely and polluting less in vulnerable areas such as around schools, and so I believe we already provide safer, cleaner traffic on these streets.

“Our customers are heavily invested in this approach too, but that doesn’t change the fact that they need a solution to ensure they are not on these streets when they shouldn’t be.

“We’re doing everything we can to help our customers navigate this new challenge because the better they manage it, the more successful the School Streets initiative will be, and the lower the cost to their business too. And that’s a win-win for everyone.”