Who closed Dulwich Village junction?

Southwark Council has always claimed the closure of Dulwich Village junction was led by local demand, and that the current Experimental Traffic Orders were based on earlier consultation and engagement. 

You can see this on the website of ‘Our Healthy Streets Dulwich Phase 3’ (which ran in early 2020) under the title ‘What you have told us so far’. Talking about Phase 2 in autumn 2019 , the website says, ‘You told us you favoured radical action at the Calton Avenue/Court Lane junction, including a permeable road closure that stops motor traffic but allows access for pedestrians and cyclists.’ 

One Dulwich has been asking the Council for a long time to release the results of Phase 2. We could see from the summary of feedback that the numbers were tiny, suggesting that few had heard about the consultation, or had felt sufficiently engaged to respond. So who were the people who persuaded the Council that the 24/7 closure of Dulwich Village junction had the backing of the local community?

A recent FOI (Freedom of Information) request has finally revealed the truth. We are giving just a snapshot here, as we’re still working our way through the data. But we can confidently present two interim conclusions.

Firstly, the assertions about the Phase 2 results made by the Council during the Phase 3 consultation are misleading and not backed up by the data. This is important, because it will have influenced the way people responded to the consultation – and is still likely to be influencing the way people think and feel in the run-up to the review in May this year.

Secondly, an analysis of the postcodes of those who responded to the online survey (which was more reliable, Southwark claimed, than the paper responses) shows that those in favour of the closure of the junction fall into two groups:

• A tight cluster on Calton Avenue or very close to the junction; and

• A group spread very thinly across and outside the borough, many some distance from the local area.

We have mapped the locations so that you can see this more clearly.

Is there a pattern emerging here? What might these far-flung respondents have had in common? 

We will publish the full report shortly.