Permanent Traffic Orders mandating some of the road closures have now been issued – see https://www.thegazette.co.uk/notice/4030579  . But there is no proper justification supplied for the closures. Perhaps they are given in the “pack of documents” which is referred to and I have requested a copy.

But it’s worth reading the Minutes of a Council Meeting on the 25th January where Cabinet Member Patrick Codd stated that the Council received approximately 150 emails about the experimental introduction of the LTNs. I believe this is a gross understatement.

It was also stated that only 16 emails were received by the Council after the decision by the Council was made to make the LTN permanent. But that is hardly surprising as most people would not have known about that decision and we did not advise people to complain to the Council as we had not seen the Permanent Traffic Orders and we preferably needed the Reference Number to ensure it is correctly recorded as a formal objection.

It seems that Patrick Codd and his colleagues are deliberately ignoring the thousands of objections that were submitted including the petition we submitted that has over 12,000 signatures.

Please send in your objections now. Please refer to Traffic Order No. 4030579 dated the 25th March concerning the Lewisham and Lee Green Low Traffic Neighbourhood and send to ParkingDesign@lewisham.gov.uk .

One gets the impression that Lewisham Councillors think the objectors to the road closures that have brought more traffic congestion, more air pollution on many roads and obstructed emergency services, will fade away given time. But they won’t and we won’t. The proof of this will no doubt come at the May council elections where long-standing Labour voters may decide a change from a one-party state would be preferable.

We will continue to oppose unnecessary road closures and all councils that ignore the views of their electorate.

Improving Our Campaigns

The Freedom for Drivers Foundation has been operating in one form or another for many years. During that period the attacks on the use of private cars have steadily increased. The Covid pandemic has been used to accelerate the trend to close roads, reduce road space and introduce more restrictions on your freedom of movement. This has to be opposed!

That’s not just the case in London which was the initial focus of our activities but across the country more recently.

We now need to improve our communications to supporters and the wider public. A number of steps are proposed:

• We are improving our social media presence. We already have an active blog which gives you the latest news which might affect you as a driver and which is here: https://freedomfordrivers.blog/  . You can now register to “follow” that blog and receive an email of new updates by entering your email address in the box at the foot of any of the recent blog posts.
• We also have an active Twitter account (see @Drivers_London ) where news and comments are posted.
• If you don’t wish to see news almost every day by using the above, then we have a condensed newsletter which is issued every couple of months. It is sent out by email as a pdf document for easy reading or printing. You can register to receive that on this web page: https://www.freedomfordrivers.org/register.htm  
• We also have a Facebook page which is focused on the London Mayor’s Transport Strategy – see https://www.facebook.com/AgainstMTS  .
• The Freedom for Drivers Foundation web site (see  https://www.freedomfordrivers.org/index.htm ) was originally developed many years ago by me and more recently has been maintained using the WebPlus software. It contains a mine of information. But the software is no longer supported by the supplier and the web site is not easy to use on a mobile device. The site needs redeveloping in a new software platform such as Wix.

All of the above, particularly the redevelopment of the web site, is beyond my personal capabilities as I simply do not have the time to do it. In essence we need some funding to do that and also to expand our marketing so as to spread awareness of our organisation.

In summary this is a call for more funding to enable this organisation to improve on what we have been doing and expand our contact base. We already have several thousand email contacts, mainly in the London area. But we need to reach tens of thousands across the whole country to have an effective voice to counter those who oppose the use of private cars.

This requires money so please donate as much as you can by going to this web page: https://www.freedomfordrivers.org/donate.htm  

Don’t delay – help me to grow the organisation and continue to fight campaigns such as the one in Lewisham by donating!

Roger Lawson