The Labour-run London Borough of Camden (LBC) has been forced to scrap a hugely controversial Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) scheme centred on Dartmouth Park on the eastern edge of Hampstead Heath – home to Ed Miliband, Benedict Cumberbatch and numerous other Labour luvvies. The plan had been to impose an 18-month ‘trial period’ with the least possible public consultation.
Attempting to put the best spin on it, LBC calls this a “pause”, but the scheme – a pet project of cycle-fanatic Cllr Adam Harrison, “Cabinet Member for Planning and a Sustainable Camden” and CBC’s Deputy Leader – was always unworkable. Uproar among locals, who discovered Camden’s brief ‘nonsultation’ was to be held during last summer’s holidays, was led by the Highgate Society which commissioned expert analysis of LBC’s dodgy metrics.
Locals packed protest meetings and deluged their council with complaints, not least about the scheme’s obvious potential for raising money by fines. With vehicle access from the north, east and south denied to thousands of homes in the LTN, voters demanded to know how ambulances, deliveries and visitors could reach them, or how anyone less than 100% fit would be able to get the shopping home?
Among many issues they highlighted were inevitable gridlock on Highgate Road, Highgate West Hill and other bus routes on the proposed LTN’s boundary, and increased air pollution on children’s walking routes to the area’s schools – ironically the same good schools which attract so many upwardly-mobile Labour supporters to leafy Dartmouth Park’s expensive homes.
Having wasted vast amounts of TfL’s money on consultants while plotting Dartmouth Park’s LTN in secret, Camden’s Labour regime has been handed an expensive lesson in not annoying one’s diehard voters. Its problems include a private company called Commonplace, and an unusually articulate local population.
Commonplace Digital Ltd is a privately-owned “citizen engagement platform” which claims to “inspire thriving places, powered by data and collaboration”. On its touchy-feely website rows of smiley, young and casually-dressed “customer success managers” and “business development managers” promote the platform.
What Commonplace actually does is to sell machine-readable online surveys to councils and developers – relieving them of the trudge of asking local people what they think and reading the responses properly, while still getting the result they first wanted via an ostensibly democratic process.
The snag, as we in Bedfordshire know to our cost, is in the questions asked and the boxes you’re allowed to tick. Our council’s Commonplace survey on local cycling and walking issues produced 826 responses, of which over 100 tried to explain – only possible in the “other comments” box – that by far our worst problem is how to get across the A1 safely into Biggleswade without using a car: a walk/cycle underpass is needed, obviously.
But in its published LCWIP plan, based on this “engagement”, Central Beds Council felt able to ignore the lethal risks run by locals trotting or wheeling their children across the A1 carriageways, because the online Commonplace survey had asked no machine-readable question about it. The metrics didn’t prove a need, which happily allowed CBC and National Highways to carry on ignoring the danger.
People are increasingly suspicious of the skewed questions asked in Commonplace surveys, and in the case of Camden’s proposed Dartmouth Park LTN, many refused to participate. Instead 773 locals emailed their council direct, as well as emailing individual councillors. Here in Beds our ward councillor just leafleted over 800 locals about our Biggleswade problem, asking what they need to get onto town safely, and the scores of replies were a revelation.
Ask people what they really think, without leading questions or tick-boxes, and what you get is ‘quote gold’. Many said roughly what was anticipated, though in their own inimitable words; others made important points that hadn’t even occurred to campaigners. Analysing genuine replies like these – as opposed to machine-readable surveys – takes time and thought, and Camden is now having to go back to the drawing board and read its hundreds of non-Commonplace responses, acutely aware that having wound up the Highgate Society and Dartmouth Park’s vigilant locals, its cunningly-worded online “consultation” cannot alone justify imposing a disastrous LTN.
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