Richmond continues to climb the Healthy Streets Scorecard league table of London boroughs

Story 229: Campaigners’ 2026 report shows the borough remains one of the strongest performers in Outer London

Richmond climbed from 17th to 15th place this year in the eighth annual Healthy Streets Scorecard⁠. Its overall score rose from 4.45 to 4.59 out of 10.

The result continues a long-term upward trend. Since the first Scorecard, Richmond has risen from 21st place, when it scored just 3.36.

The rankings suggest the borough continues to perform well at creating streets where more journeys can be made on foot, by bicycle and by public transport rather than by private car.

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Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?

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Methodology

The campaigning assessess the performance of 32 boroughs and the City of London on how well they,

.. embed healthy streets policies, enabling their residents to swap car journeys for active and sustainable choices such as walking, cycling and public transport.

Its assessments is based on ten indicators:

• six inputs including low traffic neighbourhoods, 20mp speed limits, Controlled Parking Zones, physically protected cycle tracks, school provision of School Streets and Travel for Life and bus priority

• four outcomes including mode share, active travel rate, road collision casualties and car ownership rates

2026 Health Streets Scorecard results

Richmond’s performance

Richmond’s 2026 borough report⁠ shows it remains one of the strongest-performing boroughs in Outer London.

Particularly notable are:

• the highest walking rate in London, with 45% of adults walk five or more times each week

• the highest cycling participation in Outer London, at 23.9% cycle at least once a week

• sustainable mode share remains high for an Outer London at 67.5%

• pedestrian casualty rates among the lowest in the capital

• effectively complete 20mph coverage

• relatively high Controlled Parking Zonefor Outer London at 45.2%.

According to the Scorecard methodology, there are three areas where Richmond has more work to do.

• the School Streets score appears lower largely because of a change in methodology. The Scorecard now counts only School Streets enforced by cameras or physical barriers. Richmond council introduced five new schemes, including one at Barnes Primary⁠, but nine earlier schemes no longer qualify because they rely on voluntary compliance

• bus priority remains limited, with dedicated lanes covering just 9.6% of the network

• protected cycle tracks fell slightly to 1.8% of the road network.

2026 Health Streets Scorecard results

Notes and thoughts

The annual Healthy Streets Scorecard is about more than league tables with boroughs being compared to one another.

It offers a glimpse of how London is changing.

The most interesting finding this year is not that Richmond climbed from 17th to 15th place. It is what lies behind that rise.

Richmond now has the highest walking rate in London. It also has the highest cycling participation of any Outer London borough. Around two-thirds of journeys are already made by walking, cycling or public transport.

Ten years ago, many people would have dismissed those figures as achievable only in Inner London.

Apparently not.

Now imagine another twenty-four years of gradual change.

That matters because Richmond’s weaker scores are no longer chiefly about how people travel. They are about the streets themselves.

Changing how streets work is inevitably slower than changing how people travel.

Bus priority remains limited. Protected cycle tracks are scarce. Richmond council has also been reluctant to introduce the cameras or barriers that would allow more School Streets to qualify under the revised methodology.

The implication is hard to ignore.

Perhaps the next chapter in Richmond’s transport story is no longer about persuading people to walk and cycle.

Perhaps it is about building a borough that better reflects how people are already choosing to travel.

That is exactly the question Barnes should now be asking.

Much of what Barnes2050 has explored over the past eighteen months starts from that premise.

Keeping Hammersmith Bridge open to pedestrians and cyclists. Creating Castlenau Park. Reimagining The Terrace.

Those proposals are often seen by others as attempts to change behaviour.

This report suggests the opposite may increasingly be true. They are responses to behaviour that is already changing.

That changes the conversation.

The question is no longer, How do we persuade people to travel differently?

It becomes, Given the way Barnes is already changing, what experiments could we run here that help the whole borough move forward?

That is one reason Barnes2050 keeps returning to those ideas. They are not just local projects. They are opportunities to test what a thriving, more walkable and more climate-ready Richmond borough could look like.

Perhaps that is the most useful way to read this year’s Healthy Streets Scorecard. Not as a report on the past, but as permission to think more boldly about the future.

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