Parents fear London streets are becoming ‘lawless’ as vandals wreck signposts with ‘angle grinder’

Parents in an East End borough have called for urgent action on road safety in their area following vandal attacks on roadside traffic signs by a local school.The Metropolitan Police force is investigating reports of criminal damage to street signs in Cazenove Road, Hackney, received just after 5pm on Monday, November 9. No arrests have yet been made.The signs, put up to enforce traffic bans during school pick-up and drop-off hours, were felled when vandals cut them with power tools. The destruction has reignited local parents’ fears that these residential streets are now “lawless” due to dangerous driving and “disgraceful parking”.The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) visited the site on Tuesday morning and spoke to residents as parents arrived at the school gates pushing prams and dropping off their kids.Local parent Kelly Allnutt described her school run as “absolutely terrifying, anxiety-inducing, cortisol-level-rising horrible”.“I’m not expecting a country walk to school, that would be silly. But this is ridiculous. My son can’t get across here on his bike […] Everyone’s honking their horns, there’s so much anger, and just a complete lack of acknowledgement for anybody else,” she said.The most School Streets in UKSignposts have been cut down in targeted attacksLDRSUnder its extensive School Streets programme, Hackney Council has placed numerous pedestrian and cycle zone signs at the entry and exit points of designated zones outside schools. The schemes were introduced to make streets safer for walking and cycling while cutting air pollution.According to the UK Government, with 50 active School Streets, Hackney has the largest programme of this kind in the UK. A report adds that timed road restrictions cover 87% of the borough’s primary schools – “benefitting 20,000 pupils”.But although the schemes are backed by most Hackney residents, according to council data, infrastructure across the borough has come under repeated attack as criminals have cut camera wires, severed signposts and damaged speed tracking strips – with the latest attack appearing an imitation of the so-called ‘blade runners’ who used power tools to cut down ULEZ cameras when the charging zone was expanded in August 2023.Read MoreA Freedom of Information (FoI) request revealed that between June 2024 and March 2025 there were 22 reported instances of vandalism to School Streets infrastructure across the borough. The council has recorded a further 13 incidents since then.Resident Will Petty, who belongs to local campaign group Low Traffic Hackney, told the LDRS that School Streets were “quite uncontroversial” compared to other vehicle restrictions in the borough, which also has the most low-traffic zones in London.Cazenove residents (L-R): Will Petty, Bekki Wiltshire, Tom Albu, Daisy GouldLDRS“They only operate for a few hours each day and are explicitly there to protect kids. So when something like this happens, it’s horrible. You don’t know who’s done this, but you wouldn’t do this unless you had a very specific interest in driving down this road,” he said.The locals added that despite the restrictions the road is still plagued by “countless” illegal parking and traffic offences. The borough’s own data maps show a cluster of problem parking reports on streets surrounding Simon Marks and other local schools nearby.Resident Bekki Wiltshire said she made sure her daughter walked the long way around the school to stay safe. “She’s responsible. The drivers aren’t.”Long-time resident Tom Albu added that he had previously stood on this corner with road safety officers several times. “Their jaws have dropped. Yet there has been no significant change,” he told the LDRS.A local lollipop man, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “It feels as if I’m the sheriff of a lawless town.”Dangerous roads ‘not inevitable’The area outside Simon Marks has seen a cluster of reports about illegal parkingLDRSCllr Jacob Cable, Cabinet Member for Climate, Clean Air, Energy and Transport, said the council would not be deterred from bringing “cleaner air and safer streets” to Hackney.“While this vandal has shown that some in our society continue to prioritise cars over keeping children safe, we absolutely reject the idea that toxic air and road danger are an inevitable part of life, let alone childhood.”After repeated vandalism to a fixed CCTV camera enforcing the School Street in question, the council is now using a mobile CCTV van on its patrols of the area, which the council says it will be stepping up.The Met is asking anyone with information about the incident to call 101, quoting CAD 5560/09NOV26.