If this month’s decision by London Mayor Sadiq Khan to expand his controversial Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) scheme is anything to go by, then the answer is that they’re just tick-box exercises. From next August the zone will be expanded to cover the whole of Greater London. It will reportedly include another 200,000 drivers, forcing them to pay £12.50 each day, if they own and drive an older vehicle.
This was despite a widely publicised TfL consultation this summer. Over 2.3 million emails were sent to complete the survey. Its results were irrefutable. 60% of Londoners were against the proposals. This figure rose to “a staggering 80% of people who work in outer London”.
Khan’s use of consultations, and to subsequently ignore them, is just the latest example of how elected politicians sideline the public’s opinion in favour of their own agendas.
He is not alone. Countless local authorities and councils who have proposed a variety of road closurer schemes, have sought to ask the public’s opinion, only to ignore it.
Hackney Council in East London is a case in point. They led the way having brought in 19 Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTN) schemes using emergency traffic orders during the Covid lockdown.
Every time, they overrode local majority verdicts making permanent a raft of road closures that have severely affected how everyone uses once open roads. Crucially, during each consultation, when surveyed, more than 60% of respondents wanted them removed. Yet, every time the public’s opinion — after being asked — was ignored. Which begs the question, what worth are consultations if their results are going to be ignored?
In 2021, the Telegraph pointed out that “in the consultations made public so far, 18,314 people have expressed a negative view of the active travel schemes, vastly outnumbering the 7,020 residents who expressed their support.” Since then the same pattern has continued: the public says no but councils push on regardless.
In some cases, councils have withheld consultations results altogether. Forcing residents to resort to lodging their own Freedom of Information Requests (FOIs) to uncover consultation results. Take the case of Brent in west London. One resident, Sarah Rollinson, forced her council to disclose two LTN consultation results. Her detective work reveals that in the Olive Road Area, there was a huge 787 to 198 majority against its road closure. She also found another case of a hidden majority in the Dollis Hills area. Only 41 respondents were in favour of its LTN, with a far higher 287 were against it.
However, online consultations are designed – perhaps purposely – to avoid asking questions that result in clear majorities or provide clear answers. A clue is provided by London Cycling Campaign’s (LCC) input, who have lobbied for, and helped design many LTN schemes. In their co-authored “A Guide to Low Traffic Neighbourhoods”, they offer friendly advice to councils, to “avoid questions that elicit yes/no answers”. Instead, they suggest using “sliding scales of approval” and other methods that help to diffuse and deflect the public’s response.
While the questions being asked should raise concerns, so too should how the results are presented. Many LTN consultation excercises result in lengthy reports that leave you wondering if their main aim appears to be about deflecting and confusing the public with mountains of information, rather than providing much needed clarity.
Each one comes with multiple documents, that need to be waded through to arrive at any kind of meaningful answers. Laden with lots of ambigous questions, requiring much analysis, to get even close to a conclusion. “Do you spend more time in the area?” “Is it easier to cross the street?”, “Does the street look nice?” “How many people run or jog?”, “Is there more space for cycling?”, “Are car trips inconvenienced?” Perhaps expectedly, these reports delve into significant detail about respondents’ sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, favoured mode of travel, car ownership, and not forgetting, sexual orientation.
Such ambiguity of the questions asked, together with the analysis of the minutiae of the data, makes it incredibly hard to draw any solid conclusions from it all. Seldom is the public asked as a whole, with common interests or needs. Instead, time and again, each consultation ends up further segmenting public opinion into all kinds of ‘boxes’, further obfuscating making any kind of sense from it all. It’s no wonder, in the case of Islington’s Amwell report, as it comes with a gargantuan 17 accompanying documents!
Of course, having too much information is never a bad thing. Yet, it’s the questions being asked that makes it nearly impossible to draw any clear conclusions to what should be clear yes/no answers, do residents want LTNs to be retained or removed from their local streets?
Rather, what each attempt at a consultation illustrates is an endless ‘process’ of public engagement for its own sake. According to Commonplace, the experts brought in to organise many LTN consultations, their aim is an ongoing conversation. As their website says of their process (and online platform): “We host open digital conversations that are easy to participate in and representative of the whole community.” Accordingly, everyone has an opinion, all are nonetheless valid.
Which, however, begs the crucial question: who or how are decisions made from hereon in? Unsurprisingly, given the ambiguity of these consultations, it is ultimately the councils themselves, with their armies of officers, officials and outside experts, who become the sole arbiters of our public opinion. It was certainly the case that during Covid lockdown, the Conservative Government’s guidance to councils gave them an emergency mandate so that they could overlook the public’s democratic input in local affairs.
Councils took the opportunity to implement projects without needing any prior consultation. Councils like Hackney used the opportunity to revive projects already rejected by residents. London Fields LTN closure was one example where they imposed it, regardless.
Yet, today, post-lockdown, these “digital conversations” that masquerade as democratic participation should really be a wake-up call for everyone concerned about local democracy. With each one, it is clear our democratic voices are being seriously eroded. It is time for citizens to return to the real public square and take back our democracy.
Niall Crowley is a campaigner against LTNs and other measures designed to punish motorists. This article first appeared on Free Our Streets, a local campaigning organisation in London.
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Because the pretence of democracy must go on. Or people will twig.
Government (and local government in particular) now believes that the population exists to support them.
Where the population disagrees it is wrong, and where it continues with ‘bad behaviours’ it need to be controlled. The worst behaviour of all is where the population criticises the government about its controlling behaviour — in this case the population needs to be disciplined.
This has always been a problem with government (‘nanny state’) but Covid pushed it into overdrive — far too many in government (particularly local government) think that their actions (including imposition of control measures) saved the population.
These people will happily destroy the country, thinking at every stage that they’re doing it all for our own good.
Another ruse these councils use is to frame questions in such a way that a negative response is impossible – e.g. by having no “None of the above” option.
Remember also the smoke and mirrors when Ken Livingstone’s congestion charge was introduced in 2002 or so, to make it look as it it was working well? That was a sign of things to come, huge highway surveillance, and a massive business-killing precedent. Gloomy headlines at the time predicted “massive overcrowding on buses and tubes”. Well, duh. But to make it look as if it worked:
Remember also when the charge was expanded to include Kensington and Chelsea, despite fierce opposition, and the “top ten traffic hotspots in London” showed that none of them were in K and C? Democracy at its finest.
I sometimes wonder how sensible it is for us to write to our MPs saying “we can see what you are doing!”. I keeping wondering whether to write to mine about Oxford, even though I’m nowhere near Oxford, because it is setting a national precedent. “First they came for Oxford…” etc. Several times I have written to my MP about the folly of covid restrictions, and received the usual party-approved replies, but there was one point which I raised every time, about which he always remained silent: the extremely deliberate steps taken to make sure the public was ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED. Why does he have nothing to say about this?
Traffic restrictions people’s views always ignored. People’s views are not important. What we have learnt is local politicians are as bad as national politicians. Sadly in a lot of local elections Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat are the only choices on the ballot paper
If anyone needs someone to talk to we meet every Sunday.
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am From 1st January 2023
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In the early 1990s I remember seeing a T-shirt at a stall in Glastonbury which read: “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal”.
At the time, I thought (to use Toby’s word) ‘what sophomoric piffle’, I believed Britain was the beacon of democracy and our elected members were there solely to serve us.
How wrong I was.
This is the containment element of their plan. The next part is the killing bit which even for them is tricky, this will come via euthanasia of the elderly, at first voluntarily. In time the WEF etc will seek to mandate murder for ppl no longer deemed useful.
Schwab and Soros should be first in line, in fact I insist on it!
There is no point, councils will do whatever they want as long as rich people line their pockets, its all about self interest, what the taxpayers want isn’t important.
” What’s the Point of Consulting Residents About Traffic Measures if the Results Are Always Ignored?”
To make sure that they’re annoying the maximum number of residents possible. If not, the proposals will be tweaked to ensure they hit the target.
When I worked for a Transport Authority the result of public consultations were just an exercise in PR, required by law. A great deal of time and money had already been invested in the proposals and nothing Joe Public said was going to change them.
The whole process is a con.
Judging from the comments, ignoring the people is wide spread. Here in South Wales (UK) they don’t even offer you a questionnaire that offers you a choice, all the questions have pre-ordained answers in favour of their narrative. The commentary here suggests this problem is endemic, driven by a system full of people who believe the world is flat, and there are unicorns in the forests. You can try writing to your MP, but I would suggest that the answer will be sympathetic to your views with an implication that you do not fully understand the process and the job they are trying to do. There there, Johnny, do be quiet, .
All it takes to prevent this is for voters to be told which councillors voted for, approved of or instigated these ridiculous restrictions and ensure they vote against them at every opportunity. There is so much for local journalists to do to ensure voters in council elections are aware of the anti-driver extremists who are involved in putting these restrictions in place, so when the election happens, they can be kicked out.