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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True to form, Messrs Miliband, Cumberbatch and numerous other Labour luvvies are aghast at being penned in a ghetto, but advocate 15-minute ghettos for the rest of us.
Meanwhile State-funded cycling-lobbyist, Sustrans, which nowadays has a CEO earning £140K and 4 other staff earning over £100K, has a contract with the Borough of Lambeth to make 5 LTNs permanent – also subject to legal challenge…
https://togetherdeclaration.org/public-money-but-whose-agenda-sustrans-a-uk-doges-dream/
“…Public Money, But Whose Agenda? Sustrans a UK DOGE’s Dream.”
The consultation method often adopted is to have an initial ‘consultation’ which has no legal effect. This is when forms are sent to the local community, often with leading and limited alternatives, for them to respond to. This is fairly non transparent and probably hijacked by the radicals proposing the motion . The results are then published. The whole thing being presented as if it is the consultation proper. Subsequently the council make the legal proposal which will be buried in the library and which is the proper time for the consultation to take effect. But the local community are led to believe that this has already happened and so do not respond.
Blimey – Kommissar Khan’s true followers are duplicitous b’stards, full of their master’s trickery when needing their fix of Telling Other People What To Do.
The 18 month period tells me they are using an Experimental Traffic Order which is intended to introduce a scheme and begin the consultation period of 6 months where responses are based on operational experience of the scheme. An ETO allows modification of the scheme but no addition whereby the consultation begins again. The scheme may only be made permanent if there has been a full period of 6 months operation. Camden have a record of screwing up as I went as an observer to a public inquiry they were forced to hold to get around failing to place the scheme documents on public deposit. An expensive mistake as the inquiry cost them a lot of staff time, legal expenses and fees. The report found against their scheme – another nutty cycling one – but they only had to consider the report not act on it. Camden may have made mistakes this time around such as not setting out the parameters for judging if the experiment is a success, probably because they do not care but are just using an ETO to avoid prior consultation which is illegal.
Thanks. Interesting.
Reading your comment again JDee, there is a legal problem with this as having carried out what we called an ‘informal consultation’ with groups when it comes to the statutory consultation you would have to contact them in the same way as you have created a ‘legitimate expectation’ of being consulted. Failure to do so can land the authority in the High Court.
Sounds similar to the shambles that is the 20mph speed limits in Wales. The consultation was a foregone conclusion, they just left that bit out in the survey.
Commonplace?
More like Common Purpose?
Common Purpose Exposed.
“Common Purpose drives on, and is now supported by a web of organisations, social enterprises, NGOs, charities and others promoting ‘leadership’ together with empowerment through applied behavioural psychology. The battle for our minds now includes government Nudging, Happiness and Mindfulness delivered in the covert drip drip drip of an anaesthetic.”
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/huge-overnight-police-council-operation-10018858
Council staff and a large police presence descended on Barton Hill, Bristol in the middle of the night – 3am – to undertake further work on the unwanted East Bristol liveable neighbourhood scheme despite the townspeople strongly objecting. The scheme involves dumping huge planters to obstruct traffic and block roads and lengthy diversions affecting road users. These draconian schemes are not wanted.
Camden’s Labour regime has been handed an expensive lesson in not annoying one’s diehard voters
I want these people to suffer the effects of this treacherous government’s (and previous government’s) policies.
Despite low traffic neighbourhood plans failing one after the other. Despite the fact this country is broke and going down the toilet. We now have the city of Bristol installing, yes, you guessed it, a low traffic neighbourhood. Britain is being run by so many incompetents it is hard to believe. Not one gold standard part of the country. Not one.
The Scottish Government’s “nonsultation”-what a great new word-on introducing 50 mph limits on all single carriage roads in the country was the same as those described here. No opportunity to declare non support for the measure except in the freetext, which can then be ignored.