Council workers embroiled in bitter LTN row offered wellbeing day off after “relentless hostility and anger” from residents opposing decision to “bulldoze through” plans for low traffic neighbourhood

A six-hour-long meeting to discuss controversial plans to introduce a low traffic neighbourhood was characterised by so much “hostility and anger” from anti-LTN campaigners that councillors were “left in tears” and staff were offered a “wellbeing” day off to recover, the High Court was told this week, as opponents of the active travel scheme attempt to declare the trial unlawful.

However, while the anti-LTN activists admitted that staff working at the drop-in event had a “horrid time”, and that the meeting was “challenging”, they nevertheless insisted that opponents of the plans were “not in any way abusive” – but that some attendees’ conduct did “border on abuse”.

The meeting was held at West Norwood library in April 2023, as part of Lambeth Council’s attempts to inform residents of plans for a new low traffic neighbourhood initiative in West Dulwich. The LTN was introduced around six months ago for an 18-month trial period, in a bid to stop “rat-running” motorists on the South Circular Road using nearby residential streets as short cuts.

The trial has attracted some vocal opposition from residents, however, who claim the traffic-calming measures have led to more congestion along the LTN’s boundaries, forcing them onto the South Circular Road to reach their homes.

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On Wednesday, the Royal Court of Justice heard West Dulwich Action Group’s application for a judicial review of the Labour-run council’s decision, after 680 residents raised over £50,000 to support the campaigners’ challenge.

According to the action group, the council acted “unlawfully” by not consulting residents “genuinely and with an open mind” before implementing the trial, while also failing to follow draft statutory guidance on LTNs introduced by the Conservative government in March 2024, which called for councils to “put local consent first” when devising so-called “anti-driver schemes”.

The trial, which has also been branded a “money-making scheme” by opponents, has proved divisive within West Dulwich, with campaigners accusing the local authority of being “consistently obstructive, dismissing legitimate concerns with generic, oversimplified arguments”.

That hostile atmosphere was laid bare on Wednesday in the High Court, when details of the so-called “library event” in 2023 were discussed, with the West Dulwich Action Group describing the public meeting as “shambolic” and a “fiasco”, the Standard reports.

However, according to the skeleton argument presented to the court by Lambeth Council’s barrister, the “difficulties experienced at that event were patently not the fault of the council”, and left some staff in tears.

“The claimant’s own evidence is that ‘there was considerable hostility and anger shown by residents and the council’s plans’, that the criticism from ‘angry’ residents was so ‘relentless’ that some of the councillors ‘were in tears’ and that the council team took a lunch break ‘to get away’,” Heather Sargent told the court.

“The experience of officers attending the event for the council (on a Saturday) was so negative that the then head of transport strategy and programmes offered them a day of wellbeing leave.”

Charles Streeten, representing the action group, also told the court that the three council workers at the library event, which lasted for six hours, had a “horrid time”.

However, he said: “My clients’ position is that they were not in any way abusive, but there were people there whose conduct was bordering on abuse. We are not disputing the challenging nature of the event.”

Nevertheless, he noted that the “shambolic” manner in which the event was organised meant that people arriving at lunchtime were unable to participate, because staff took a lunch break at the same time to escape the overwhelming hostility.

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Arguing more generally against the council’s implementation of the LTN scheme, Streeten continued: “The consultation itself was not carried out fairly. The product of the consultation was not conscientiously taken into account as it should have been.”

He argued that government guidance outlined that LTNs should not be imposed “in the face of strong local opposition that is clearly representative of the views of the community”, and that the West Dulwich consultation had been a “whitewash”, claiming that “people were not listened to” by the local authority.

“Something clearly has gone radically wrong here,” he said. “Where you have strong opposition from a majority of people, you need to ‘front up’ to that and explain why you disagree with the majority. Instead, the council chose to bulldoze through the introduction of the LTN.”

In response, the council’s barrister Ms Sargent told Judge Tim Smith that the group’s claim was “without foundation and should be dismissed”.

She argued that proving that a consultation was so unfair to be unlawful faces a “substantial hurdle” – essentially proving that something went “clearly and radically wrong” – but that the claimant came “nowhere near” to surmounting that hurdle.

“At their highest, both grounds of challenge amount to a series of detailed criticisms of the council’s approach. Even if those criticisms were made out, they would not show that anything went clearly and radically wrong,” she said in her submission to the court.

“Even if all three grounds of challenge were made out (and none of them are), the court would not have the power to quash the [legal orders] because it is plain that neither the interests of the claimant nor those of West Dulwich Action Group have been prejudiced at all, still less substantially.

“In the council’s submission… the consultation was obviously not so unfair as to be unlawful. Indeed, when the process as a whole is considered, the council does not accept that it was unfair at all.”

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Nevertheless, Mr Streeten argued that the council’s use of two traffic orders to create the LTN was unlawful because “the council’s approach to consultation was so unfair”, and that the authority “failed to provide adequate reasons for its decision, failed to have regard to obviously material considerations and/or acted irrationally.”

He added that a council engagement report, published last February, showed that the “overwhelming majority of respondents were not happy with the proposals”, with 67.5 per cent indicating that they were “unhappy” with the planned trial – but claimed that the consultation responses were written on “scraps of paper”, and so not properly recorded.

Judge Tim Smith reserved judgment, which is due in the middle of March.

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Following the hearing, a spokesperson for the West Dulwich Action Group said: “We are keen to stress that this is a complete waste of local taxpayers’ money, as Lambeth could have decided to enter in to discussions with the WDAG and broker a way forward – we simply wanted a true consultation where Lambeth would respond to our real concerns.

“This never happened, and instead Lambeth have chosen to pursue court action and try to make out that we, on behalf of 1,000 residents and businesses have acted irrationally.

“This is a blatant disregard for the community it serves and we maintain that the LTN forces more traffic and pollution on to congested boundary roads where the more vulnerable communities and 6,300 children go to school, live and commute from.”