A primary school with dangerous levels of toxic air pollution has seen “remarkable results” following the installation of a wall of ivy in the playground.

Staff and parents at Bowes Park Primary – an old Victorian school that stands on the notoriously busy North Circular - have made repeated calls to Enfield council and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to cut the high levels of black pollutants that they believe are harming the pupils.

Now it seems, a wall of ivy introduced a couple of years’ ago to help absorb some of the pollution has done just that and the levels have dropped by a fifth.

A council spokesman said: “As part of efforts to find ways of reducing levels of air pollution in the Borough, as part of its air quality action plan, Enfield Council installed an experimental Green Wall, made up of Ivy, at Bowes Primary School in 2015, to see if it would lower concentrations of Nitrogen Dioxide on the playground side of the wall.

“The study involved installing a 12 metre long and 2.4 metre high Ivy screen at the nursery entrance area of the school.”

Testing took place during the summer of 2017 and results showed that the playground side of the wall had a 22 per cent lower level of Nitrogen Dioxide than those recorded at the roadside.

Enfield Council’s cabinet member for environment, Daniel Anderson, said: “While we are actively working to encourage people to leave the car at home and use alternative and more sustainable modes of transport, including on the daily school run, to reduce the amount of pollution entering the atmosphere in the first place we are also looking at projects which can remove existing pollutants.”

Bowes Primary in Enfield borough is in one of at least 20 London locations where particulate pollution soared to a “very high” level — black or 10/10 —according to scientists at King’s College London.

Enfield Council is now looking at extending the initiative to schools in areas with high pollutions level.