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Jane Harris, a local resident and campaigner, explains why the Bethnal Green and Weavers LTNs work well for the local community, in response to Rishi Sunak's latest comments.

Rishi Sunak has ordered a review of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) and implied that they are a destructive force in towns and cities across the UK. But from here in Tower Hamlets, allegedly one of the more divided areas on this issue, the opposite is actually true.

A clear majority of Tower Hamlets residents have consistently said they support walking and cycling infrastructure whenever we are asked in consultations - and this is despite new mayor Lutfur Rahman’s position that he has to “reopen the roads” to fix the borough. However, two separate consultations in 2019 and 2022 have failed to support this idea. While politicians can successfully treat roads as a wedge issue around elections, when people see or experience the reality of safer streets, they see the benefits as significantly outweighing any downsides.

It’s important to recognise that LTNs inherently rely on local specifics - how the traffic filters, planted areas, bike lanes and seating work with the grain of a community. It’s not possible to say that all LTNs are good or bad, much like it’s meaningless to say that all buildings are good or bad. If they are well designed, then our experience in Tower Hamlets is that they can transform thousands of lives for the better, by making it a safer and friendlier place for walking, cycling and meeting up with friends and neighbours outdoors.

In Tower Hamlets, it is especially important to think of everyone rather than just car drivers. Only one third of households in the borough have access to a car, which is amongst the lowest levels of car access in both London and the country. The borough has some of the highest levels of deprivation in the UK, and there is a significant number of people who earn their living as delivery cyclists.

In a cost of living crisis, we have to help people to use the cheapest forms of transport - cycling, walking, the bus and tube. The public don’t want to see their money wasted on removing street infrastructure which could instead be invested in important priorities such as education, health and housing. And why should the safety of hundreds or thousands of people earning a living as delivery cyclists in east London be pitted against the convenience of private hire drivers?

Getting neighbourhood-level changes to streets right is not easy. There are numerous different lives and uses to balance. However, it is important that national and local governments support schemes which encourage more people to walk and cycle, and to use their cars less. Every time someone chooses an active or more sustainable option for their journey, they are reducing congestion for those who need to drive, they are improving their own and their neighbours’ health and they are helping to foster a safer and friendlier community.

Jane Harris is a local resident and campaigner with two young children and a disabled husband who uses a wheelchair. The family have seen their lives immeasurably improved by low traffic neighbourhoods in a deprived area of Tower Hamlets where they live, and Jane is campaigning to stop mayor Lutfur Rahman returning heavy traffic to the Bethnal Green streets.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has ordered a review of low traffic neighbourhoods in England

In light of this, Channel 4 ran a report on LTNs today. Our Jane Harris was on hand to defend safer streets and to highlight their benefits to the local community (forward to 2m05s).

400+ support the report findings and sign open letter to Tower Hamlets mayor and council.

Since we came together as a group last summer, one of our biggest concerns has been about the way the Liveable Streets consultations have been run by Tower Hamlets Council - both the recent one in February and the one conducted last summer.

This week, we sent a report to the Tower Hamlets mayor, his cabinet and senior officers, laying out the problems we have found with how the recent Liveable Streets consultations were run.

The report was accompanied by an open letter summarising our findings, which was co-signed by the London Cycling Campaign, Oaklands School, Tower Hamlets Wheelers and over 400 locals.

Our report lays out how the conduct of the council has fallen short of the Aspire manifesto pledges at every stage since the May 2022 elections. We explain how their consultation process prevents them from fairly canvassing all views:

• Key stakeholders - Residents and interested parties such as schools, TfL, Bart’s Health Trust and the Met Police, have objected to the mayor’s proposals and have not been listened to.
• Multiple consultations - Re-consulting with the same proposal undermines trust in the democratic process.
• Bias and confusion - Information presented to the public has been extremely one-sided, downplaying the benefits of the current layouts and exaggerating the benefits of “reopening the roads”. The second consultation overloaded people with confusing graphs, unreadable plans and the consultation period was so short that it left insufficient time to ensure clarifications could be sought.
• Process - Many people have been excluded from the process due to the lack of warning, in-person events and confusing documents. The way that ‘unique survey reference numbers’ have been relied on by the council means that hundreds of local voices have been discounted from the headline presentation of survey results.

Click here to read the report in full. Click here for the open letter.

SOSS campaign discovers hundreds of local residents’ views were excluded from LBTH Council’s consultation report

Today we issued a press release and data sheet that show Tower Hamlets Council didn't include hundreds of local residents’ responses in its analysis of last summer’s Liveable Streets consultation.

Removing these responses significantly changed the outcome of last year’s survey, which was only revealed when the council launched the second consultation in January.

The information we have now received in response to an FOI request shows that over 400 resident responses in the Bethnal Green area and over 200 residents’ responses in the Weavers area were excluded from the data the council published as “local responses”. This meant that up to 28% of local residents’ views were disregarded in the council’s analysis for some areas.

The responses were excluded because they didn’t use the code from the paper consultation packs, even though their postcodes should have been enough to identify them as ‘local’.

Our analysis shows that when these residents’ responses are included, the results reveal significantly stronger support for keeping the current street layouts.

"Tower Hamlets Council 'misrepresented' TfL on Liveable Streets"

Roman Road LDN has published a piece which reveals that Transport for London believes it was 'misrepresented' in Tower Hamlets Council's latest round of public consultations about Liveable Streets.

This has recently come to light through a Freedom of Information request in which TfL Strategy Officer Alex Williams writes, in a letter to Tower Hamlets Council:

“[W]e firmly support retention of the LTN on Old Bethnal Green Road. We have offered funding and resources to progress further bus priority measures on Hackney Road, to address any impacts caused by the LTN."

By contrast, the council claimed that TfL supported removal of the LTNs, claiming delays to busses on Hackney Road. Campaigners are concerned that this could have imapcted the consultation results.

Read the article here.

We have written an open letter to the Tower Hamlets council and mayor in response to the latest consultation.

In our letter, we highlight the growing body of evidence in support of retaining the current road layouts. We maintain our position that "keeping and improving" the current schemes is a much better option for people in Bethnal Green, Weavers, Brick Lane and everyone who lives, works, studies and visits Tower Hamlets.

Our July 2022 open letter in response to the previous consultation was signed by 934 Tower Hamlets locals and was included as a stakeholder response in the 2022 consultation outcomes reports (see here for Bethnal Green and here for Weavers).

Read our current open letter in full here. To sign, fill out this form. Please also share with your network! Anyone who lives, works or studies in Tower Hamlets can sign.

"Tower Hamlets mayor accused of ‘culture war’ against low-traffic schemes"

Harriet Grant has written a piece for the Guardian, covering the backdrop to Tower Hamlets council's second consultation and their proposal to remove our safer streets.

We're proud to have the forceful words from our very own Jane Harris given such prominence.

“We answered a consultation on these areas last year and the result showed a majority of respondents want the safer streets schemes to stay in place. He promised in his manifesto to be a listening mayor – so why does he need to be told twice?...

He is supposed to be everybody’s mayor but we feel he is going to war – that this is a culture war. It does not have to be this divisive, we have had constructive conversations with residents who question the scheme.

Read the article here.

Head teachers from Old Bethnal Green Road and Weavers Ward sign letter in support of new road layouts.

Breaking news: In a show of solidarity, head teachers from Lawdale Junior School, Elizabeth Selby Infant School, Virginia Primary School, Columbia Primary School and Oaklands School all sign a letter to Tower Hamlets Council supporting the new road layouts. The head teachers say they want to protect children’s health and safety and that means rejecting the Council's proposal to remove the low-traffic areas. They ask the council to reconsider and work with them and other stakeholders to improve the current layouts.

We're sharing the content of the letter below.
You can download a PDF (723 kb) here.

Dear Mayor Rahman,

We the undersigned are all headteachers of the schools located within the Old Bethnal Green Road and Weavers “Liveable Streets” schemes and we would therefore be severely impacted by the proposals the council published on 19 January.

We have experienced Bethnal Green before the new street layouts and after. And it is clear to all of us that the recent changes to our local streets have brought about significant improvements to the safety and health around our schools.

Before, the immediate area around our schools was dominated by speeding vehicles, noise and fumes.  Now, we can see from the data provided that there has been a significant reduction in cars using the roads around our schools and that this has positively affected air quality.

From the summer 2022 consultation results that you have recently published, we can see that support for the changes is a majority view in Bethnal Green and Tower Hamlets as a whole.

Are the current schemes perfect? Surely not. Can they be improved? Yes, we think so.

Ofsted requires us to identify and mitigate threats to children’s health and safety and the proposals are a threat to safe arrival and departure from school. Ofsted also requires us to communicate with stakeholders and this is why we are speaking out to make our position on this issue clear.

That is why we are deeply concerned by the proposals you have published at the start of a three-week consultation process. You haven’t put forward any options for improving the schemes by building on what we currently have. Instead, you are presenting a choice between reopening roads such as Old Bethnal Green Road to more than 6,000 vehicles per day or keeping the layouts as they are.

You are furthermore confusing matters by saying that schools such as ours will only be able to benefit from improved pedestrian crossings if the current street layouts are removed. Why should we have to choose between a safe, low-traffic area for our students and a zebra crossing outside our school? Controlled crossings in sensible places would significantly improve the current layouts, without the need to re-introduce thousands of dangerous and polluting vehicles every day around our schools.

Please reconsider your proposal and work with us and other stakeholders and the wider community on a third option, which accepts that the current layouts are popular and successful, but could be better. Don’t go back to square one. Look to improve what is already there. You are very welcome to meet us at one of our schools and walk around the neighbourhood to find out more for yourself.

Yours Sincerely

Annette Rook, Headteacher Lawdale Junior School
Ann Wood, Headteacher Elizabeth Selby Infant School
Barbara Lo Giudice, Headteacher Virginia Primary School
Oliver Woodward, Headteacher Columbia Primary School
Simon Ramsay, Headteacher Oaklands School

We urge residents to “see through council’s greenwash” and vote to keep the current street layouts.

We at Save Our Safer Streets are shocked and disappointed at a consultation launched by Tower Hamlets Council (19 Jan ‘23) on the future of Liveable Streets schemes - six months after a previous consultation on the same proposals.

The results of the last consultation, which have not been published until now, show wide-ranging support for the current street layouts.

We urge residents who support the low traffic schemes to see through the flawed and very misleading text in the new documents and vote for Option 2 - to keep the new layouts. Option 1, to remove the schemes, amounts to blatant greenwashing.

It's good that the new consultation document contains evidence which was missing in the last one, but it also contains many baseless claims. For example, it claims that ripping out both dedicated cycle lanes and quieter, traffic-free social spaces will encourage people to walk, cycle and socialise, as long as the council also puts in a few plants and a handful of new crossings and three dropped kerbs. This is nonsense. Who will cycle or walk more or sit on a solitary bench with 6,000 more cars thundering along Old Bethnal Green Rd?

We're pleased the council have included some of the clear evidence that the schemes are working. Their data shows that the new layouts have improved our neighbourhoods, reducing traffic across the area by 9,700 vehicles a day and introducing better, safer, walking and cycling routes. Residents living near the schemes supported all the current measures except one. Across the borough, support for the schemes was overwhelming.

Despite this positive data and clear local support, the Mayor and council are choosing to ignore the first consultation and the second biggest petition ever in the borough. They are trying yet again to push their same old idea - one that will cost millions of pounds.

The council’s suggested changes will have a wide impact, putting at risk much-needed improvements to Hackney Road including a proposed new bus lane which Transport for London have said can only be put in if the current street layouts remain.

So far the Mayor has ignored our repeated requests to work together respectfully to find ways to keep what is successful in the area and build on that. We believe the best solution is to listen to local people, keep the current layouts and make smaller, cost-effective changes if necessary.

Again, we urge the people of Bethnal Green to look beyond the false claims from the council and not be overwhelmed by the details in the 20-page document. As residents we need to show we still care about our streets being healthier, friendlier and safer for children, disabled and older people and all of us. Choose Option 2 – to keep the schemes. This is the only way to avoid wasting a lot of money and taking our neighbourhood back to the noisy, unhealthy and unfriendly past.

As 2022 draws to a close, we've put together a campaign update, reflecting on successes, learnings and next steps.

Thank you all for your continued support, and let's keep up the fight in the new year!

Juliette Tuke has a short comment in the Financial Times in response to Janan Ganesh's "Why I, a non-driver, wish the car well".

Ross Lydall, from the Evening Standard, has published an article covering our save our safer streets campaign. The article covers our recent successes in pausing the removal of the new road layouts, mobilising over 3,000 community members from Tower Hamlets to sign our petition, and crowd-funding over £16k to support a legal challenge.

We're thrilled to see coverage like this is such a high profile newspaper!

Our petition has closed today with an amazing 3,094 signatures, making it the second most-signed petition in Tower Hamlets ever! We saw people from across the community come together to ask the council to STOP, LISTEN and IMPROVE, instead of scrapping our safer, friendlier, healthier streets.

This fantastic show of support smashes the council’s threshold of 2,000 signatures – the number needed for them to hold a debate on the issues raised – and gives them an idea of just how many local people want them to take more care over the future of our streets.

We owe this great campaign milestone to everybody who signed the petition and spread the word. Special thanks are due to those tireless volunteers who hit the streets with flyers, day after day, to make sure everyone in the neighbourhood heard about the council’s plans and got the chance to raise their voice.

THANK YOU EVERYONE!

We hope the debate might lead to a process of listening and collaboration between the council and the community. But this is far from over, so please stay tuned to find out what the mayor announces this Wednesday, and to hear more about the council debate on Wednesday 5 October.

Today we can say with some confidence that Save Our Safer Streets is having an impact on Tower Hamlets council.

In August, the council approved its strategic plan, which said that it would decide to “reopen the roads” in September and then rush to implement that decision in October. The council was publicly committed to rushing through its proposals.

Today we know that their decision on “reopening the roads” is NOT going to be pushed through in September. It is on the agenda for the 28 September 2022 cabinet meeting as an announcement, which means that no decision is going to be made.

OUR CAMPAIGN ACTIVITIES IN AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER BEAR FRUIT

Our Save Our Safer Streets activities in August and September have contributed to this change of heart by the council:

• A whole cross-section of Tower Hamlets residents have written to the mayor and his councillors, gone along to surgeries and shared their stories online, using their voices to show all the different ways that the new street layouts have benefitted them and their families.
• 2,600+ people who live, work or study in Tower Hamlets have signed the petition started by Simon Ramsay, headteacher at Oaklands School on Old Bethnal Green Road, calling on the council to stop, listen and improve the new street layouts rather than rush to remove them. This is the highest petition currently on the Tower Hamlets website and the second highest in its history!
• And more than 220 people have donated over £16,000 to the CrowdJustice campaign, which is funding a potential legal challenge to the flawed process the council is currently pursuing.

WHAT DOES THIS DELAY MEAN?

This delay to the council’s plan is a meaningful win for our campaign – in fact you could say that we are a step closer to achieving step 1 of our petition:

1. We petition the council to STOP plans to scrap the new street layouts so there is time to reach a justified decision.

SO WHAT’S NEXT?

We now know the mayor will make an announcement, rather than a decision, about Liveable Streets at the cabinet meeting on 28 September, and we’ll be watching closely to see what he says. We would expect him to talk about the results of the consultation and share more information about his timetable.

We can’t be sure what the announcement will be, but we now have some time to move on to the other parts of our petition, starting with step 2:

2. We ask the council to LISTEN to residents, businesses, schools and service providers across our diverse community to understand the benefits of the new street layouts, as well as any issues.

A thorough debate at the 5 October full council meeting will be a good start, so that all our elected representatives can share their views. It is thanks to everyone’s efforts that there are enough signatures on the petition to trigger the debate.

We are preparing our plans for the 5 October meeting of the full Council and we look forward to the discussion and debate that follows. We hope that the council meeting is the beginning of an ongoing dialogue with the council which could culminate in step 3 of our petition:

3. We want to find ways to IMPROVE, not hastily remove the new street layouts.

We have always said we would much rather work with the council, stakeholders and the whole community to come up with ways to improve what we have, rather than challenge any unlawful decision through the courts.

THERE’S PLENTY MORE TO DO – SO STAY IN TOUCH

We would like to thank everyone who is contributing to this campaign. Stay posted with what’s happening over on Twitter and Instagram – and please do keep pointing people towards the petition (open until 25 Sept) and the CrowdJustice page if they want to show their support for keeping and improving, rather than removing, the new street layouts in Tower Hamlets.

Polly Nash, in the local community Roman Road LDN magazine, has written about Transport for London's (TfL) disappointment with the Tower Hamlets' consultation that seeks support to remove the new road layouts.

Citing TFL communication with the Tower Hamlets council, the article makes clear TfL are in favour of the new road layouts. London's public transport organisation has invested in the safer road scheme and suggests its removal could put further funding in jeopardy.

Reopening the streets is already in the council’s strategic plan for October, and the final decision will be made on 28 September. At Save Our Safer Streets, we fear the only way the mayor will listen to us is through a legal challenge, and we need to prepare it now or it’ll be too late.

We’ve launched our CrowdJustice fundraiser today because we know that our safe, healthier, friendly streets mean so much to our community. Please support us with a pledge if you can, and help us to spread the word.

Visit the CrowdJustice fundraiser page

Click here for more information about our legal challenge and what we need from you.

Sign our new petition which has gone live on the council website.

We are asking the Council to:

• STOP plans to scrap the new street layouts
• LISTEN to the diverse communities and stakeholders in our borough
• IMPROVE the new street layouts to keep what is working and improve where needed

By signing, you’ll help to make sure the council knows how many people want to keep our safer streets. And with enough signatures we can force the council to have a proper debate about ‘reopening the roads’.

Today, we've sent a letter to the mayor of Tower Hamlets asking him to hold off from removing the improvements to our streets in Bethnal Green and the borough. We've asked for evidence to be openly shared, a longer consultation period, and full engagement with all the community.

Over 800 people from around the neighbourhood, including schools, businesses and residents have signed the letter so far. Add your name to the live version of the letter.

See our press release here.