Tower Hamlets Council faces legal challenge for scrapping LTNs

Demonstrators gathered outside Whitechapel town hall in September to protest the decision

A campaign group has asked to take an east London council to court over its decision to remove low traffic neighbourhood (LTN) infrastructure.

Tower Hamlets Council decided to remove the traffic calming measures in September.

The Save Our Safer Streets campaign group said the council had failed to comply with the law "in several ways".

The council declined to comment but it previously said LTNs were not "a one-size-fits-all solution".

LTNs were introduced during the Covid pandemic with the aim of reducing motor traffic in residential areas by using either cameras, planters or lockable bollards.

They were put in Bethnal Green and other areas of the borough.

When scrapping the scheme, the council said it would instead invest £6m in "active travel" schemes.

LTN schemes included blocking roads to reduce traffic

The campaign group said the legal challenge was "an absolute last resort".

But, it said, it believed the council had "not complied with the law in several ways, including ignoring government guidance on LTNs, running a flawed consultation and decision-making process, and failing to properly consider if removing the LTNs was a good use of £2.5m".

Papers published a week before the final decision was made showed 58% of local residents living in Bethnal Green were in support of keeping the traffic calming measures, while 41% wanted to see them removed, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

In Brick Lane, 59% of residents who took part in the public consultation wanted to see the closures stay, with 41% wanting to see them removed.

The council declined to comment on the potential legal action when asked and instead pointed to a statement issued when the LTNs were scrapped.

Lutfur Rahman, mayor of Tower Hamlets, said in September that the LTNs had divided communities.

He said: "While LTNs improve air quality in their immediate vicinity, they push traffic down surrounding arterial roads, typically lived on by less affluent residents."

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