It’s time for Southwark Council to stop ignoring the community

Before Christmas, Southwark Council decision-maker Councillor Catherine Rose announced that the Council planned to publish its plans for a “consultation and survey” relating to the temporary road measures early in the New Year. What can we expect this community engagement to involve?

As the Experimental Traffic Orders in the Dulwich area were introduced under emergency powers, the Council didn’t have time to carry out a public consultation or Equality Impact Assessment before they went in. There was, however, widespread astonishment when the Council suggested that they knew there was public support for the measures because of the earlier, incomplete “Our Healthy Streets: Dulwich” consultation – an entirely different and more holistic scheme that included (among other proposals) permits for residents. 

This was compounded by:

• the Council refusing to publish the OHSD survey in full to validate its claims that a majority of local residents were in favour of closing Dulwich Village junction;

• the knowledge that the OHSD scheme had included misleading information (including the assertion that traffic through Dulwich Village junction had increased by 47%), which would have influenced people’s responses;

• the fact that the OHSD consultation had never included the option of area-wide timed restrictions, even though this had been requested at the public meetings, and raised with councillors by local residents;

• the discovery that, throughout the OHSD consultation process, the Council had held unreported meetings with a working group that included well-known pro-closure lobbyists;

• the obvious bias of the questions on the Commonplace website (which, although our ward councillors agreed they were unacceptable, the Council nevertheless continues to promote unaltered); and

• the lack of public meetings in December 2020 about the measures in Dulwich Village, despite earlier public meetings about the measures around Melbourne Grove.

In 2019 Southwark Council published its Approach to Community Engagement, an interesting 20-page document that sets out its principles and standards of engagement. These include a desire to work collaboratively with the people affected by the policy or change under consideration. One Dulwich has offered on a number of occasions to work collaboratively with the Council on the development of an inclusive and socially just solution to traffic issues in the Dulwich area. So far, it hasn’t been invited to do so.

In June 2020, Cllr Rose’s predecessor, Cllr Richard Livingstone, said, “The measures are flexible as the experimental nature of the trial allows us to make amendments and changes within the first six months.” Unfortunately, flexibility doesn’t appear to have been part of any community engagement to date, and no significant changes or amendments have been offered or made. The six-month deadline has passed without any review taking place – without, indeed, the Council even making public how many objections it has received.

To help restore a degree of trust in the Council’s interactions with the community, badly dented by this and earlier consultations relating to Dulwich Village junction, One Dulwich calls on Cllr Rose to apply to the engagement process not only the principles and standards that Southwark has set itself, but also best professional practices. To this end we propose that the forthcoming consultation and survey should:

• involve residents’ groups, traders’ groups, health and social care workers (doctors, midwives, carers), and organisations championing the rights of protected groups, particularly the elderly, the disabled, and women who are pregnant or on maternity leave;

• make a specific effort to contact those who are seldom heard, rather than deferring to an established list of groups and societies;

• ensure consultation with those living on residential main roads who are likely to be experiencing the impact of any traffic displacement;

• publish on Southwark’s website the minutes of any private meetings with special interest groups and lobbyists, including paid consultants acting on behalf of campaign groups;

• require individuals to state if they are members of special interest or campaign groups, or are professional lobbyists or consultants, when making responses at Council meetings, or public meetings organised by the Council;

• provide both oral and written responses, not just be councillors operating “in listening mode”; and

• be evidence-based, using hard data not opinion surveys to support decision-making.

Surveys should:

• be conducted by an independent, established, professional research organisation;

• contain questions that are open, unbiased, comprehensive, inclusive and accessible, reflecting the needs of all sections of the community, including those with protected characteristics, to enable the Council to meet its obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty;

• provide a balanced choice of options that allow respondents to support the road measures, ask for them to be removed, or ask for modifications (following Croydon Council’s model of “Remain, Remove or Replace”);

• have strict eligibility criteria – for example, only over-18s;

• use methods to prevent and detect fraudulent entries (PIN entry?);

• provide offline and online options to enable those without internet access to participate;

• give more weight to responses from those living and working in the affected area; and

• be clear in advance how and when the results will be interpreted and applied.

It’s time for Southwark Council to stop ignoring its residents, businesses and traders, and start genuinely trying to involve us in co-creating a socially just and balanced solution to the problems of traffic and air quality in Dulwich. Applying its own standards and best practices to community engagement would help the Council to demonstrate its impartiality and provide confidence in the integrity of the results.