There are a number of recent news items concerning the road closures and “Low Traffic Neighbourhoods” in Lewisham in which you may be interested:

The Council held a Committee Meeting for all Councillors on Wednesday the 21st October. Members of the public could submit questions to the meeting and there were an unusually large number of those (over 160 which is exceptional). The questions were responded to in writing. A major proportion of the questions were about the Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) scheme, and road closures, mostly from people clearly opposed to them.

Most of the responses just repeated the dogma that we have seen spouted by councillors for the last year, which typically talks about the need to reduce air pollution and help reduce climate change by cutting traffic. But they accept that the Lewisham/Lee Green scheme is not working as expected. There were a couple of specific items of interest:

-        The proportion of households who own a car in the Lee Green Ward is 59.3%, not the 50% that is generally talked about for Lewisham.

-        The Council has received £1.5 million in fines from people ignoring the restrictions on Manor Lane, Manor Park, Dermody Road and Nightingale/Ennersdale Roads, with another £1.6m in the pipeline. This just shows what a strong financial incentive the council had to put in these measures – they can make very large sums of money from people who accidentally or from ignorance go through the closures.

-        One good question asked was how many complaints the Council had received about the closures.  But the only answer given was “a significant amount of correspondence” although several petitions were mentioned. But surely it’s not that difficult to give an estimate of objections received? Clearly an evasive answer.

-        No councillors seemed to question the policy or implementation approach of the LTN.

On Thursday the BBC TV News ran an item on the issue of PCNs in Lewisham. They reported the Council had collected £3m in 3 months from fines (see above) and spoke to people affected. That including the Griffith family who were selling their home as a result of the road closures. Others supported the complaints about the poor signage – for example when approaching Manor Park from Northbrook Road the closure is only apparent at the last moment.

That evening the Mayor, Councillor Damien Egan, held a meeting on the LTN which was more a public relations exercise than a serious attempt to answer residents’ questions. I have received complaints that questions were not answered and certainly one I submitted before the meeting, and another during the meeting were ignored.

It was actually quite difficult to log in to this meeting. It used the Microsoft Teams software for the webinar.

The Mayor made it clear that he does not want to remove the LTN altogether and the council will persist with trying to make it acceptable. He said that he had met with groups representing each side of the LTN, but he has not met with our group so clearly he is only listening to selected voices.

The Mayor did comment on the amount of abuse councillors had received on the subject and asked for less of it. This just shows the strength of feeling on the matter which councillors are ignoring.

Incidentally I am advised that Councillor Octavia Holland had received a lot of abusive emails after I suggested complaints in Lee Green should be directed to her. This is unfortunate and I ask our contacts to be more polite in future. We certainly did not encourage such abuse.

Louise McBride outlined the changes that are to be implemented in early November but did not explain the rationale behind them. There will apparently be a survey of residents (both digital and paper) in December with a wider consultation in April.

Councillor Sophie McGeevor also explained that more long-term changes are planned including spreading LTNs over a wider area mainly by the use of cameras. The only thing that is delaying the use of more cameras is the difficulty of obtaining more from suppliers who had large demands for them from other London boroughs!

Clearly there is no admission that the policy of closing roads is a mistake.

The excuse for the rapid implementation of the LTN and lack of public consultation was the urgency to prevent a car-based economic recovery and the urgency to collect the money being provided.

But a TfL spokesman did report delays to buses and congestion on Hither Green Lane. They think the changes will improve matters.

THERE IS CLEARLY NO INTENTION TO ABANDON THE POLICY OF ROAD CLOSURES AND YOU ARE GOING TO BE STUCK WITH THEM FOR THE NEXT 6 MONTHS AT LEAST SO OUR CAMPAIGN TO REMOVE THEM WILL HAVE TO CONTINUE. ROAD CLOSURES MIGHT ACTUALLY SPREAD OVER A LARGER AREA.

Altogether a disappointing meeting. But the numbers of our supporters for this campaign continues to grow. Make sure you ask your friends and relations to support it.

Don’t just accept the road closures – make sure you object!

Roger Lawson