Ep. 6 – Better Streets manifesto pledges – with Lucy Caldicott

Filed under: Podcast

In this conversation, Kevin Carmody speaks with Lucy Caldecott about the ongoing road safety emergency in Birmingham, the challenges of implementing road harm reduction strategies, and the importance of community advocacy in holding local government accountable. They discuss the gap between policy and actual delivery, the resistance to change in road safety measures, and the need for political will to ensure that manifesto commitments are fulfilled. The conversation emphasizes the role of residents in advocating for safer streets and the complexities of managing traffic in a growing city.

Birmingham 2026: Ten asks to address the road safety emergency

Transcript

Kevin Carmody (00:06)
It’s been 525 days since the road safety emergency was declared in Birmingham. The council has a road harm reduction strategy. They have a transport plan. They have the funding. Yet for this May’s 2026 elections, Better Streets for Birmingham has asked every candidate to support a 10-point list of measures. Manifesto pledges if you like. This isn’t a wish list. It’s asking candidates to actually deliver what they have already

Today I’m talking with Lucy Caldicott. She’s a former Lambeth Stockwell councillor and has delivered road harm reduction measures in her own ward previously and is now Better Streets campaign lead. two sides give her a unique insight into the Safe Streets advocacy relationship. Lucy, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me today.

Lucy (00:58)
Thank you for inviting me.

Kevin Carmody (01:01)
So, as I say, the council has declared an emergency. It has published road harm reduction strategy. It has committed to Vision Zero. These pledges are largely, they’re already council policy, aren’t they? So why do we now need to get them to kind of recommit these as manifesto pledges?

Lucy (01:20)
think what we see far too often is that declaring, making policies and declaring emergencies and publishing strategies, it’s different to actually delivering change on the ground. And what we see in Birmingham is a pace of change that is really very slow. So we see plans being published and then years later, still not delivered. ⁓

What we did at Better Streets for Birmingham as we move closer and closer to the elections in May is we decided to put together 10 asks. We did it with colleagues in different campaigning organisations, which I think is vital. So we worked with lots of our colleagues in other campaign groups to put together these key asks, which, as you say, our policy, they’re not outlandish, brand new things.

but they’re things which if taken together and delivered would make a massive difference to levels of road danger on our streets. And I think the other piece that we did was we tried in the beginning part of the asks, we also tried to paint a picture of what we think better streets in this city could look like. Streets where children are walking to school or cycling to school, streets where…

You can wait and get a bus that’s clean, safe, affordable, and it’s going to get you to work on time. Streets where people are driving at safe and responsible speeds. You know, that shouldn’t seem like a too far away, but it is quite far away from where we are now. So, yeah.

Kevin Carmody (03:06)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it does it does often seem like that kind of gap between that initial, we’re going to implement this to then seeing that implemented always feels like very long timelines, doesn’t it? So, yeah, so what I guess this is what is that gap then between this is a strategy and then actual delivery? You know, what does that what does that look like within it within a council?

Lucy (03:19)
Yes.

So I’ve been a counsellor and it’s quite interesting because when you become an elected ⁓ public servant, you are introduced to the enormity of what a council delivers. So adult social care, children’s services, I hesitate to say bin collections, and it’s a huge business. so there are a lot of competing.

priorities and what we’ve seen in Birmingham is of course, well what we’ve seen across the country are councils having their funding, their central government grants reduced, which has had the biggest impact in Birmingham because it is the biggest municipal authority. And so there is a shortage of money, a shortage of capacity, a shortage of people to implement these projects.

And often the other piece is that often different departments are responsible for different bits of delivery. So you have a transport department and you have a separate highways department and both of those big directorates will have a set of activities that they’re doing. it’s often the joining of the dots between these different elements is what’s hard. So…

Kevin Carmody (04:49)
Yeah.

Lucy (05:01)
many things can get in the way. And of course, you when I was elected in 2018, we didn’t know what was around the corner in 2020, you know, the pandemic came along and ripped up all those plans that we might have had. you have other things that come to sort of trip you up along the way as you’re, you know, when you’re in office, which kind of, you know, stop you from delivering what you might have originally planned. So, it’s really…

It’s really that, I think, it’s the complexity, the enormity, the scale of delivery that you have to do. ⁓ But you need the political will. It’s the political will that needs to keep the officers moving forward. And that often can get kind of wrong-footed by events.

Kevin Carmody (05:40)
Peace.

Yeah.

I mean, is this uniquely different in Birmingham? Is the disconnect, does it seem larger than it did in other councils that you’ve worked with or is this a common thing, a common theme?

Lucy (06:06)
I think it’s a common theme, definitely. I think what we’ve got here in this city is a difference of scale. So Lambeth is an inner city London borough. It’s ⁓ representing about 330,000 residents, something like that. And in Birmingham, we’re talking about a council that’s got, you know, you’re talking about like well over a million residents.

Kevin Carmody (06:09)
Yeah.

Lucy (06:36)
In Lambeth, the number of councillors is 63. In Birmingham, is it 101, 102? So there’s this big disparity, which I don’t know why. I haven’t really got my head around why that is, but what it means on the ground for a councillor, where here in Birmingham, you’ve got one or two member wards. Across Lambeth, we were in three member wards. So my number of residents per

Kevin Carmody (06:45)
Right, right.

Lucy (07:06)
per councillor was much lower in Lambeth than here in Birmingham. So it means you’re dealing, just the inbox of a councillor in Birmingham must be much, much bigger than I would have been dealing with. So I think there is, it’s the similar themes, like you’re always gonna have caseload and residents wanting things, but if you’ve got a much bigger inbox and also for a department,

Kevin Carmody (07:12)
Yeah.

Lucy (07:35)
you’re dealing with a much bigger city, right? Birmingham compared to Lambeth, it’s a much different scale. So it’s interesting.

Kevin Carmody (07:44)
Yeah.

And yeah, I mean, is, as you say, it’s, it’s, there’s kind of different competing priorities, you know, the scale of deprivation in Birmingham is, is an awesome. can, you can imagine that really soft in the focus.

Lucy (07:58)
Yeah, because not only have you got to deliver those priorities,

you’ve also got to deliver them in a way that delivers for the whole, you know, diversity of Birmingham, you know, right across this city and, you know, with all these different communities. so you’ve got to deliver change in ways that try to bring people with you as much as you can. And that, you know, that requires a lot of thoughtful work, you know, so it again gets in the way of speed.

Kevin Carmody (08:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I guess clarity of, you know, clarity of the what you what you say you’re going to implement when you’re running for election, then having that as an accountability tool, which I guess is, you know, what we’re hoping that these manifesto pledges will provide.

Lucy (08:45)
Yes, exactly. I mean, that’s in a way our role. And it is interesting for me being outside the role I’ve have done in the past and now being in that campaigning role, because it’s ⁓ an important action for community groups like ourselves to take to express these, you know, know, asks in ways that hopefully some of the politicians will either adopt or

you know, say yes, but we don’t, you know, we don’t have a, we have a policy of not adopting, but you know, yes, we support those because we’re kind of giving them a to-do list. And the more that the public can come along with us and say, actually, yes, that vision of a safer, better, cleaner Birmingham is somewhere where I want to live. The more residents can come along with us for this work, ⁓ the more that whoever takes office in May, the more they’ll have to listen. So.

So that’s the role of us, that is sort of being that accountability measure and helping residents to campaign on their own behalf.

Kevin Carmody (09:52)
Yeah, we since we’ve been ⁓ publishing these manifesto asks, I’ve seen on membership numbers kind of or supporter numbers I should say really lift up, raise with with clearly support many of the many of these things that we’re asking for. But they are things that they already are in policy, but it’s it’s we’re asking them to to reiterate on that delivery.

Lucy (10:06)
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah. And I think often residents, you know, who have got busy lives, getting on with their lives, won’t know that these are, you know, they won’t, know, people who aren’t like us, you know, in the geekery of policy documents and cabinet minutes, won’t know that these are policies. So in a way, another role of this activity is to kind of help, help people to understand.

what actions could be taken by their council and could be implemented to make our streets safer.

Kevin Carmody (10:50)
Yeah. So some of these, so for example, the 20 mile an hour default speed limit, 20 mile an hour rollout, which is which is in council policy and it is also in our our calls for them to recommit to. We we know what an effective policy is. We know how in Wales has produced 25 percent reductions over 18 months with no enforcement.

And it’s just down to signage on the streets. What is stopping each ward just kind of going out and demanding that tomorrow?

Lucy (11:28)
So I think partly it would be that residents wouldn’t necessarily know that that’s the stated policy of the council. So they wouldn’t know to ask for it in a way. ⁓ And I think often, even though the data is clear, there are people who sort of instinctively resist ⁓ change or they instinctively resist being told what to do. ⁓

So you can get political pushback where people talking about kind of nanny state type, state intervention as being somehow bad, even though this is about saving lives. I’m old enough, ⁓ sadly, to have been around when the ⁓ sort of road seat belts, I forgot what they were called then. They’re so part of everyday life, but campaigns to bring seat belts in.

Kevin Carmody (12:22)
Yeah.

Lucy (12:27)
were, you know, that was contested. I mean, they’re just extraordinary and extraordinary to think now, but at the time it was, you know, a big argument about a nanny state. so there’ll be these pushbacks and people instinctively push against something they think is going to inconvenience them, even though

an average speed across Birmingham if you’re driving is going to be probably less than 20. It’s not going to be, it’s actually not going to inconvenience you. So I think it’s this sort of mythology that goes on that means people kind of push against things. And I think another role for us as a campaign group is to help people have more of the facts and understand the background to some of these measures and why. I mean, the difference between

Kevin Carmody (12:53)
Yeah.

Lucy (13:16)
20 and 30 miles an hour in terms of the damage it does to a human body is enormous if you’re in a collision. So we need to share those facts and the evidence.

Kevin Carmody (13:28)
Yeah, yeah, there’s a couple of things. I mean, you kind of alluded to early on in that that it’s almost for residents to ask the councillors, please implement your policy. You know, it’s that’s that’s a that is kind of funny, funny idea to me. But, you know, I guess it’s there are such a whole raft of these policy documents. So it does need that ongoing reminder of that. Perhaps these are the important ones and these these are the ones you really need to be.

focusing on.

Lucy (13:58)
Yeah,

I mean, I’d hate to say that, you know, I’d hesitate to say that people would write things in manifestos and then not, you know, automatically plan to deliver them. You know, I wouldn’t want to be saying that, but ⁓ it does seem odd that you’re having to ask and push a council to deliver what it’s already said it was going to deliver. know, ⁓ but that’s, I suppose that isn’t…

unique to here and it isn’t unique to this issue. It is a facet of campaigning for change that you can get, you know, maybe get it onto a policy list, but you have to keep on reminding people, keep on pushing. Today, the government, the national government has released a road safety strategy, the first one in a decade. Extraordinary. Like, why would you have no road safety strategy? So it is

odd that individuals have to campaign for things that keep them safe when the stated purpose of a government is to keep its people safe. But, you know, it is where we are.

Kevin Carmody (15:09)
There was, I’d say that strategy that came out today, I did see in some papers, the reduction in the drink drive limit could sound the death knell of rural pubs. Which is, as we say, the idea of not wearing a seatbelt now is crazy. Why do we still try to…

Lucy (15:30)
Oh, again, I

mean, I, again, I’m, I’m old enough to be, you know, to remember when it was perfectly acceptable. It seemed perfectly acceptable for people to have a few drinks and get in the car. And, um, and, that has become pretty taboo. And so that, you know, and that is, you know, that is the change that does happen over time. It’s the same with smoking, you know, smoking.

Kevin Carmody (15:44)
Yeah.

Yeah,

course.

Lucy (15:58)
when

I was first at work, you could sit and smoke at your desk in an office. mean, just extraordinary to think that we’ve changed, know, things have changed so much. but, know, it was contested that the cigarettes did damage to you, you know, for so long. And so I think that, that, you know, and that, that, like, like I say, there are some sections of, you know, sort of

Kevin Carmody (16:14)
Yeah.

Lucy (16:24)
philosophical thinking that instinctively push against change and there was instinctively say they’ll equate, you know, a reduction in drink driving will mean, you know, it’s kind of, it’s sort of playing to a certain gallery, I suppose.

Kevin Carmody (16:43)
Yeah, mean, it’s that kind of, yeah, that’s small c conservative really, which is, what, what I think many of us are in, you know, and

Lucy (16:52)
Yeah. Many people

are very instinctively against change in any kind of change. You I think that is at our heart. We get a bit worried about change. And so that when you’re a councillor you’re campaigning and trying to take people with you or when you’re a campaign group and not necessarily a politician, trying to take people with you, trying to listen to people’s anxieties and think about how you might counter those or, you know,

adopt, know, adjust what your plans are to take into account people’s other experiences or what have you. I working with people and listening is a very, very important part of all of this.

Kevin Carmody (17:31)
Yeah, So we have the Kings Heath low traffic neighbourhood and the difficulty that they’re having in delivering that scheme. And, you know, it’s really gone for long time. much of that is people not necessarily feeling that they have been part of that journey, that this is the council are putting this, you know, kind of putting this on the residents. I mean,

Lucy (17:58)
Mm.

Kevin Carmody (18:01)
We do talk about that in our manifesto pledges about cutting down through roads and reduction of traffic in residential areas is an important part of road safety strategy. But how do we get from that being something that’s in a policy document, that’s in a manifesto pledge to have as a council and then deliver that?

Lucy (18:29)
Well, I think what we’re up against is if we continue with the status quo, I mean, was it yesterday? We were told to be very excited about how many new cars have been sold ⁓ in the last 12 months or something. So the number of cars is going up steadily and the number of roads isn’t going up steadily in the city. So we are starting to get to a point. There will be a tipping point.

where there will be gridlock if we carry on because you can’t just carry on having more and more cars. You’ve got to find a way to somehow reduce. the issue has been over the last sort of 10 or 15 years that the use of Google Maps and Waze has basically kind of encouraged people and no fault of their own. And I use it too. I’m not, you this is about all of us.

but people go, you know, sort of encouraged to take shortcuts through residential roads and shave a few seconds off of their journey. So I think that, you know, the low traffic neighbourhood idea is, you know, in isolation is difficult to argue for unless you see the bigger picture.

because what you’ve got to try to do is explain how we’re trying to cut those through journeys, keep cars on the main arterial routes and overall try to reduce the number of journeys taken by car. And it’s a very complicated argument and complicated conversation to have on social media. what, I mean, I was involved in Lambeth in…

in implementing a low traffic neighbourhood in my ward in Stockwell Ward and Oval Ward, which are neighbouring wards along the A3 coming next to Oval, the cricket ground. ⁓ we were basically, we cut through traffic along a series of roads down that A3 because you couldn’t just cut one because then you just put the traffic onto the next one. So you couldn’t, you just move the cut through. So we basically had to cut all of them. And

Kevin Carmody (20:42)
Yeah.

Lucy (20:49)
In order to, you know, to sort of have the conversations with residents, I can’t tell you how many conversations I had with residents, you know, like endless conversations with residents, endless walking around with them where they told me what their concerns were. I had people who were worried, people who worked in a hospital locally who were worried that their journeys would be delayed, had people with blue badge holders who were worried about their carers coming.

I had ⁓ mums who had school runs to do on their way to work. And so we listened to all of that feedback and genuinely made changes. So for blue badge holders, you got an exemption. So there were changes you can make. I suppose what I’m trying to articulate, probably quite long-windedly, is that a ⁓ low-traffic neighbourhood should be seen as part of a bigger picture. In Lambeth, it was a bigger plan. It was across the whole borough.

and it was part of the London plan. It wasn’t just one ward, one place, because if you do it in one place, then you will risk putting traffic elsewhere. But what we found was that we had the LTN in Stockwell Oval, then I had residents on the neighbouring and they wanted it as well. So you then get this kind of desire because actually it’s really good. It’s really good because the traffic stays on the bigger roads and over time people do take fewer journeys.

And over time it works and I could show you the one in Lambeth. know, there’s some great pictures of much quieter streets now. So, but you do have to have the conversations with residents. You do have to listen and you do have to be ready to make adjustments where they, you know, they recommend things that are different.

Kevin Carmody (22:35)
Yeah.

I mean, that really sounds like, again, that important being able to have fewer or be working in an environment where there are fewer residents to each councillor. So you’re able to have that engagement. Whereas if you’ve got so many residents.

Lucy (22:53)
Yes, exactly. I do think that’s, you that is a difficult, you know, dimension here in Birmingham. And I think the other thing that I was, you know, I look back and was quite fortunate was that at the time we were doing this, it was at the moment of the pandemic when you were allowed to meet outside maximum of six people. So not only did I have fewer residents, I also could only meet in groups of six. So I did a series, I remember doing series of walk arounds and

And there was a particular estate. And this is an interesting example of what you can be told by an officer in the council. And then when you go and have a look yourself, you realise that it’s different. So there’s an estate in that ward that is owned by Lambeth. So it’s a council estate and there’s a road through it, which is a private road because it’s on a wholly owned land by Lambeth. So I was being told by the transport department.

or the highways department, that’s a private road. Google won’t send trucks down there. That’s not going to be a traffic jam. And then I went and had to look at it with residents and they said, no, no, no. You know, everybody uses this as a cut through already. This is already a problem. And so we looked at how could we cut that, you know, could we gate that road or what, you know, what could we do? So we found some solutions for that. But it’s really interesting, unless I’d done that, unless those residents had told me, we’d have had juggernauts probably going through like a

Kevin Carmody (24:10)
Yeah.

Lucy (24:19)
⁓ a council estate where children play. So you have to do that work. You have to get out there and be prepared. I had people shouting at me. I had people really upset. But I think the other thing I want to say, because I don’t want to paint this picture of, Birmingham should do this and Birmingham should do that. We’ve got to remember that in Lambeth or in London, only a third of people have access to a private car for their own personal use. Whereas here, it’s more like two thirds.

Kevin Carmody (24:46)
Yeah.

Lucy (24:46)
So

we are talking about a very, very different context.

Kevin Carmody (24:51)
Though I mean most most journeys here are sort of under quarter of a mile or something like that. think it was. Sorry.

Lucy (24:58)
Yes,

yes, I think that is another thing to think about that, know, what I mean, in London, of course, you’ve got much different public transport availability as well. So let’s not forget that as a another dimension.

Kevin Carmody (25:04)
Sorry.

yeah

yeah so a quarter of car trips are under a mile which is yeah i mean that’s

Lucy (25:15)
Yeah,

that is a very interesting statistic, which I find it interesting. I have been used to, because in, see in London, if you have a car, you can’t necessarily park it outside your house because, you know, because parking is pretty congested. ⁓

And if you do, so if you do move it, you lose your parking space. So then you start thinking, well, I’m not going to use it to go to Sainsbury’s because Sainsbury’s only 15 minutes walk away. So I’m going to walk to Sainsbury’s. So me and my partner, Claire, we’d walk to say, like we would walk up and down rucksacks full of shopping. And we just got used to that, even though we owned a car. And so then we’ve come here and we see everybody going to the supermarket in their, in their cars. And of course, you know, but we’ve carried on with our, you know, our rucksacks and

Kevin Carmody (26:03)
Yeah.

Lucy (26:04)
So it is interesting. I sort of think there’s an interesting sort of way of thinking about this, that if everybody who does, know, say you do 10 car journeys a week, if everybody said, well, I’m going to do one less, I’m going to do nine, instantly you’d have 10 % less cars. You know, you’d absolutely transform things in a heartbeat. And so what I sort of, I will always say to people is this is about all of us. This is not about, you know,

pitting one person against another person. I’ve got a car, I drive around in a car. It’s like, I’m not going to shame people. This is about all of us trying to work towards a different way of living in our city and working together to make that happen.

Kevin Carmody (26:44)
Yeah, of course.

Yeah, yeah. We have in my ward in Harborne we have had a parking permit scheme has been on the books for years now, you know, as long as I remember going to ward forms and it’s still struggling to be delivered. And I’ve seen different teams of highways engineers come in, take ownership of the project, do consultations, you know, I mean, it’s

know, to kind of bring it back to say, bring it back to the manifesto pledges, does having that clarity of statement of this is what we’re going to be implementing. I mean, does that because this this must have morale problems on these teams are struggling to deliver these issues. Yeah.

Lucy (27:37)
it must be so tough, I think.

Because you do need the political kind of backup. You need the sort of all of it working together. So you need the public campaigning side, the politicians having the back of the officers who were tasked with delivering those things. And it’s hard for the officers if it’s all put on them.

Kevin Carmody (27:45)
Yeah.

Lucy (28:01)
So all of that kind of needs to work together. But again, I remember all of this in 20, 25 years. I remember congestion charge coming in. I remember Red Routes coming in. I remember congestion, sorry, controlled parking zones coming in, so ⁓ paid for residents parking. All of that coming in, all of that was contested. There were arguments against all of it and it is now there.

Kevin Carmody (28:21)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Lucy (28:31)
It’s all there, you know, so and gradually what happened with with controlled parking was that, you know, you’d have one little cluster of streets, maybe, you know, in Harborne like round like the main shopping area, and then the neighbouring streets would get congested. So they’ll they want it as well. So then gradually it kind of moves out and, you know, the council’s got a revenue stream, which, you know, per household is not much, you know, was like not a big fee.

Kevin Carmody (28:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Lucy (29:00)
per household, but it’s kind of acknowledging that roads are not free, that people are I need to be able to park outside my house. Well, you don’t own the road outside your house. ⁓ It’s public land and it has to be maintained by the public purse. you know.

Kevin Carmody (29:13)
No, no, and it’s paid for by

And if we

say the car ownership is, you know, is two thirds of the population, that means another third or quarter or whatever. You know, they’re also still paying for that upkeep, even if they’re, you know, they’re kind of subsidising that.

Lucy (29:28)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Kevin Carmody (29:35)
Okay, so the worry here then is that people are going to commit themselves, they’re going to offer manifesto commitments ⁓ and then they don’t follow through. ⁓ Or I suppose flip side is that they don’t want to be say it publicly at all. But you know, they still believe I mean, how do we how do we kind of get people to commit something and to stick to it?

Lucy (30:01)
So I think we continue our work. So we continue pushing, we continue encouraging residents to make these calls. So imminently we’ll see who the candidates are across all of the wards, for all of the parties and no parties. And I would encourage people who support Better Streets for Birmingham’s aims and want to see the sort of result of the…

that the asks that we’ve got in the manifesto, if you want to see that implemented, then when you see your candidates and ⁓ ask them, email them, ring them up, if they come to your door, ask them what they’re gonna do and like get these issues up on the agenda so that whoever takes control, know, we don’t know, there may be a change of administration, but whoever’s in power, they know very loudly what…

residents of this city want. So if this is what you want, if listeners to this podcast want this, then ask the candidates and then once they’re in office, you can hold them to account. And we will be holding them to account because that’s our job as campaigners. But the residents will have whatever the commitments are that are made, will be able to hold them to account. that’s democracy.

Kevin Carmody (31:25)
Yeah.

Lucy (31:25)
And the

opposition will also have a strong, whoever’s the opposition following May will also have a strong idea of, so they’ll be holding the administration to account as well. ⁓

Kevin Carmody (31:36)
Yeah, yeah. know, so

I mean, that’s very much our job is to keep reminding that this isn’t, you know, this isn’t just a temporary thing. This is an ongoing issue and one that hasn’t been solved. No.

Lucy (31:47)
Yeah, we’re not going away. And

we’re not going away. you I maps, you know, you and I and all of us are committed to this work. So, and I think that, you know, the job of us is to do our campaigning work and raise awareness of these issues, but also to give members of the public the tools and the facts so that they can do whatever campaigning that they feel able to do as well if it matters to them. So.

Kevin Carmody (31:58)
Yeah.

Thanks. Okay, well, thank you very much, Lucy, for taking time to talk through this with me. Yeah, it has. It’s been really great to listen to someone who has experience on implementing this and has experience in ⁓ engaging with residents as a councillor, as well as as an advocate. If you

Lucy (32:20)
You’re very welcome. It’s been great.

Kevin Carmody (32:41)
The listener would like to know more about our manifesto asks, you can find them on our website, which is betterstreetsforbirmingham.org, and you’ll also be able to sign up there as a supporter, which is free to do, and helps add your voice to this chorus asking for change. Thank very much, and I look forward to seeing you again next time. Bye.