The part-time low-traffic neighbourhood in Greenwich and Blackheath will be made permanent after a panel of three Labour councillors rejected two challenges to the scheme.
But the council leader and the cabinet member for transport pledged to deal with traffic problems in Charlton that followed the introduction of the LTN in last year. One resident with children at a local primary school said it was no longer safe where he lived and that he had cut back on cycling in the area.
Streets east and west of Greenwich Park have been closed to through traffic between 7-10am and 3-7pm on weekdays since November last year in the latest in a long-running series of attempts to stop drivers using back roads as cut-throughs to avoid the A2.
Residents had long complained of abuse and antisocial behaviour from rush-hour drivers and an earlier scheme just covering west Greenwich was scrapped before the 2022 council elections following complaints the scheme had pushed traffic to the east.
The new scheme covered a wider area – but led to complaints that traffic had been pushed even further east, into side roads in Charlton such as Eastcombe Avenue, Victoria Way and Marlborough Lane.
While the scheme succeeded in slashing traffic levels in the areas covered by the scheme, council officers admitted in their report to Anthony Okereke, the council leader, that it “may have contributed to localised increased traffic pressures on some specific roads within the Charlton area.
On the narrow northern section of Victoria Way, close to Fossdene primary school, a 23 per cent increase in evening rush-hour traffic was recorded after the opening of the Silvertown Tunnel. Marlborough Lane, close to Cherry Orchard primary school, was hit with a 40 per cent increase in evening traffic.
Publicity to residents attempted to paint a sunnier picture, claiming a 15 per cent traffic reduction in the Charlton area – a statistic that appeared to be largely based on a fall in traffic using The Village and in the Charlton Lane area, well east of the affected roads.
Higher increases in traffic were also recorded on Blackheath Hill, Greenwich South Street and Woolwich Road, with Greenwich South Street recording a 58 per cent increase in the evening rush hour after the opening of the Silvertown Tunnel.
Lakshan Saldin and Tamasin Rhymes, of the Independent and Green group, challenged the scheme after a report recommended the LTN be made permanent. They wanted a decision on its future deferred until traffic levels had stabilised following the opening of the Silvertown Tunnel.
Charlie Davis from the Conservatives also called in the scheme, wanting it scrapped altogether.
Saldin, whose Charlton Hornfair ward covers the affected area, said the data showed that the opening of the Silvertown Tunnel in April had appeared to cut traffic more than what the council had called the “neighbourhood management plan”, but that this could change if the new crossing ultimately brought more traffic.
He said some “boundary roads” included in the report that had been reported were either inside the scheme – such as Stratheden Road – or too far away to be counted as boundary roads – such as Charlton Lane – and that had skewed the data. He also said that improvements in air quality were mostly negligible.
“Streets that used to see a car every 20 seconds are now seeing a car every 10 seconds,” he said, and pointed out that even as “a confident cyclist”, he was finding it harder to cycle in the area because of the level of traffic.
Saldin mocked the council’s pledge of “targeted mitigation measures” for the roads that had been affected, saying: “That’s not really telling us what you’re going to do, that’s like me saying I plan to go to the moon: how are you going to get there? Oh, I’ll invent something. That’s something that’s very difficult to convey to residents. Certain words are doing a lot of heavy lifting.”
He said that the level of monitoring in Charlton only came as a result of a previous challenge he and other councillors had made before the scheme was implemented.
Calum O’Byrne Mulligan, the interim transport member for transport, insisted that all the roads monitored were relevant to the scheme, but said he could not make any concrete pledges on mitigation because it could prejudice any future consultation on them.
Okereke said that deferring the scheme would only delay mitigation measures, and branded the decision “a pivotal moment in Greenwich history”.
“On data points, we cannot pick and choose data points that show it has improved here and not here,” he said. “We have to look at the scheme holistically.
“We are attempting to change behaviour, and that will take time.”
But he admitted the council “had work to do” on the seven boundary roads where traffic had increased.
Okereke brought up the case of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, the nine-year-old girl who lived off the South Circular Road near Hither Green and died in 2013 as a result of air pollution.
“Her story should give all of us a chill. Her mother Rosamund was my teacher and now leads the fight for clean air,” he said.
But Davis pointed out that Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who stood for the Green Party in the London Assembly elections in 2021, has spoken out publicly against low-traffic neighbourhoods.
“I was surprised to find she was on the same side as me,” said Davis, who stood for the Tories in that poll. “She said she was going to write to Sadiq Khan about LTNs.”
Many of the contributions from residents pitted neighbourhood against neighbourhood. John Bangs, representing traders in Royal Hill, west Greenwich, said that businesses had been hit by the cameras on the road. He hoped the scheme’s approval would allow cameras to be moved to boost trade for Christmas, but the call-in had delayed this.
“There are over 100 jobs threatened within the affected shops,” he said. “While a call-in is the democratic right of councillors, its practical effect is that Christmas trade will be seriously undermined as will local deliveries. If there are more delays in decision-making, the practical effect is that businesses will be forced to close. I’d ask the councillors: do you want to take responsibility for that outcome?”
Saldin said a deferral would not affect whether the council could make a change to the scheme.
Kate Middleton, who has documented traffic jams and antisocial behaviour from drivers on Vanbrugh Hill, east Greenwich, on social media, said that sat-navs had “brought rat runners” into local streets. “We do appreciate the difficulties of people in Charlton, they are suffering from the Waze app, she said. “Rather than chucking our children under 4x4s, they should be looking at ways to mitigate that.”
While Sarah Hornsey, speaking for the Charlton Central Residents Association, whose members live in streets near Charlton station, called for the complete removal of the scheme: “This is a question of social justice. How can the council seek to improve the environment for one group of affluent residents at the expense of others who are less privileged?”
There was barely-disguised irritation from the council leadership about the call-in, but the mood softened when two residents spoke of their own personal experiences.
Matt Guinn, who said he lived close to Blackheath Hill, said he had been “car horns beeping all the time, shouting and swearing – it’s intolerable while I’m working”. He said he had been threatened when he went out to remonstrate with drivers and the police and council had refused to take any interest. “You should be monitoring this – I’m going out on the street and monitoring, and I’m being threatened.”
Ben Dholakia-Wellens, who lives in Charlton, said: “One of the council’s missions is that everyone in Greenwich should be safer and feel safer. I don’t, and I don’t think many of the families around where I live on a boundary road do either. I think it’s a real shame because I know there are people who do feel safer because of this, but we don’t, and that’s a big problem for those of us who live here.
“There is more displaced traffic on the road I live in. My kids go to Sherington primary school. I can’t speak for all the parents there, but the ones I connect with feel similarly to me. We don’t really feel very convinced that there are good mitigations. It is all very well sort of waiting and seeing what will happen, but we see more and more traffic on Eastcombe Avenue in particular. It’s not safe, and I would hate to take my kids on a bike around there.”
O’Bryrne Mulligan gave a “personal commitment” that he would look at making roads in Charlton safer, while Okereke said his council would flag up antisocial behaviour with the police.
The three members of the call-in sub-committee – Labour councillors Lauren Dingsdale, Joshua Ayodele and Dominic Mbang – voted to allow the scheme to go ahead.
But committee chair Dingsdale said they felt “really strongly about the impact on boundary roads and we’d like to voice our strong recommendation to keep monitoring the impact on boundary roads, and to make the data publicly available, and to take into account things like safety”.
A formal consultation will now have to take place before the scheme is confirmed.
After the meeting, Saldin told The Greenwich Wire that the call-in showed the benefits of having independent councillors to challenge council decisions.
“I genuinely didn’t think the data supported the decision,” he said. “So I’m both surprised and disappointed that the panel arrived at that decision. I think deferring it would’ve solved a lot of the problems about Royal Hill — the changes to save Christmas — and you’ve still had time within the call in to make sure that the data actually supports what they say.
“My biggest concern is given the tiny, tiny positives in the air quality data, it won’t take very much additional traffic from the Silvertown Tunnel [for things to get worse]. It’s not going to take much more to push that back the other way, at which point you’d be looking at 39 exceedances rather than 39 negligible reductions.”
📩 Follow The Greenwich Wire on Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn or Threads. You can also sign up for WhatsApp alerts – or subscribe to our emails through the blue box above.
You must be logged in to post a comment.