By ROSS CLARK
As courtroom dramas go, it might not have matched the freeing of the Guildford Four or the conviction of murderer Dr Crippen.
But thousands of south Londoners who five years ago found themselves suddenly barred from making local car journeys they had been undertaking for decades, greeted the judgment handed down by Deputy High Court Judge Jim Smith this month with something approaching euphoria.
The council will now either have to go back to the drawing board, consult afresh on the scheme – or abandon it altogether. What it won’t do, apparently, is refund the £1.07 million in fines which it has raked in since last October, as motorists fell foul of the fiendishly confusing road closures.
Meanwhile, Bath and North East Somerset Council could face a similar fate. Following the court decision in Lambeth, the council has been threatened with legal action by furious Bath residents over an ‘experimental’ LTN introduced last year.
According to locals, Bath and North East Somerset council’s actions ‘are exactly parallel’ with how Lambeth treated their residents, after allegedly failing to listen to objections.
In the 19th century, borough councils filled our towns and cities with public halls, parks and fountains and became a source of civic pride. But what do they give us in return for our ever-rising taxes these days? Forests of traffic bollards, road-blocking plant boxes and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras – all installed to fleece the unwary motorist.
Flower boxes shut off a road in a Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) in East Dulwich, south London
Bollards have been placed in a street in Cowley near Oxford, to create a LTN
Councils have become little more than avaricious extortioners, springing fines on residents in an effort to fill the financial black holes created by low productivity, ill-judged property investments, ballooning debt repayments and extravagant pension schemes.
Lambeth is the first council to be defeated in the courts over LTNs but unlikely to be the last. Croydon Council is also facing a High Court action brought by residents who claim to have uncovered evidence that the road schemes were always more about raising revenue than their stated purpose of reducing congestion and pollution.
Using traffic fines as a revenue-raising tool is supposed to be against the rules for local councils. As the Department for Transport said in a statement last May: ‘Councils have powers to enforce traffic regulations in order to ensure our roads are safe for all users and that people can move around without undue interference. They are not an alternative way for councillors to raise taxes or decide who gets to travel where.’
While councils are under an obligation to put any surplus from LTNs into other transport schemes, they are not allowed to openly budget on the basis of fines.
I am not a fan of using the courts to rule on what should be matters for democratically elected councillors but what are you supposed to do when a council blatantly misuses powers to fine motorists and ignores the will of the people?
Croydon residents thought they had defeated LTNs at the polls in 2022 when they threw out a Labour administration and elected a
Conservative mayor, Jason Perry. He promised to abolish LTNs, which he described in opposition as ‘a money-raising exercise by a bankrupt and desperate council’. But no sooner were his feet under the mayoral desk than he decided to keep the schemes, saying he couldn’t afford to lose the revenue they generated.
The tragedy of LTNs is that their aims – to encourage walking and cycling, to cut pollution and reduce crime – may be worthy, but they’ve been undermined by the heavy-handed manner of their imposition, often in the face of objections from a majority of local people.
Most of these schemes sprung out of nowhere during Covid, when they were dressed up as temporary measures to aid ‘social distancing’. Yet when the pandemic subsided, many of the LTNs – to the surprise of absolutely no one – became permanent.
A common LTN sign showing who the road is and isn't open to; namely cars are not allowed (Pictured: Isleworth in Middlesex)
It happened in Hackney, in spite of 64 per cent of residents being opposed to the experimental trial, and also in Cowley, Oxford, where 63 per cent of residents came out against the scheme there.
As with so many measures considered to be vaguely connected to the health of the environment, councils seem to think they are on the side of the righteous when it comes to LTNs – and so majority opinion counts for nothing.
Fewer people would object if the fines were less outrageous and if their introduction had been combined with improvements to public transport.
Instead, LTNs have made getting around by bus far more aggravating. In another of Lambeth’s LTNs, covering the Streatham area, buses took two hours to cover a mere three miles. This was too much even for that ultra-fan of LTNs, London’s car-hating Mayor Sadiq Khan. He eventually ordered the Streatham LTN to be suspended as it was conflicting with the operations of Transport for London.
Councils like to drone on about ‘equality’ and ‘diversity’, yet it was the poor who ended up suffering the most from LTNs as traffic was diverted from smart neighbourhoods to the main roads where they are more likely to live.
On the relatively desirable streets that fell within the Lambeth LTN, traffic levels dropped by up to 60 per cent, but on the arterial roads on the boundary – which already had far higher traffic levels – the amount of traffic increased by 8 per cent.
The fines are also yet one more form of highly regressive taxation. The basic £160 charge amounts to nearly half a week’s take-home pay for people on the minimum wage.
This, campaigners claim, will prove another possible route to legally challenging LTNs, if it can be proven in court that they have discriminated against disabled people, ethnic groups or women.
Councils are particularly vulnerable to legal challenges made by the first group, given that some disabled people who rely on cars have found themselves cut off from facilities they need to visit, or forced to make long detours.
Research by campaigning group Transport For All found that LTNs had also failed to make streets any friendlier for wheelchair users. Pavements were still blocked by tree roots and signposts, as well as being marred by a lack of dropped kerbs. Bollards, installed to stop motorists steering around obstructions, have also made roads impassable.
What led to the victory against Lambeth was the council’s failure to fully consult with residents. A judicial review can’t overturn a council’s properly formulated policy, but it can rule that the way in which the policy has been introduced was unlawful.
Councils are bound to listen to all sides before introducing a measure like an LTN; they can’t just ride roughshod over, say, tradespeople, shift workers and anyone else who has a perfectly legitimate need to get about by car.
What happened in the High Court does not mean an instant end to LTNs, but it has shifted the debate and could mark the beginning of the end.
At the very least, it should hit the brakes on the arrogant way they have been imposed on residents against their will.