Why was Dulwich chosen for an LTN?

We’ve been puzzling for some time over why Southwark chose Dulwich Village for its first ever Low Traffic Neighbourhood. If you look at the July 2020 report from Southwark’s Environment Scrutiny Commission, Dulwich doesn’t fit any of the criteria they recommend.

Ideally, the report says, Southwark should create LTNs ‘as a priority’ in areas of deprivation, with high levels of public transport, poor air quality, and lower levels of car ownership.

Dulwich Village ticks none of these boxes. It has very low levels of public transport, generally (before the LTN went in) better air quality than other parts of Southwark, high car ownership – and is the least deprived area in the Borough.

Dulwich has the very lowest public transport (PTAL) ratings of 1 (purple & mauve) and 2 (blue)

So why choose Dulwich?

Cynics might say that Southwark picked a highly car-dependent area in order to make a lot of money from fines. A recent FOI (Freedom of Information) request has revealed that in just seven weeks, from January to February this year, four ANPR cameras in Dulwich Village (a fifth camera was out of action) resulted in 22,424 penalties – which, if everyone paid £65 (the early fine), will have netted the Council nearly £1.5 million. This is an eye-watering amount.

Others might argue that the 2016 re-design of Dulwich Village junction – which nearly 70% of locals voted against, and which arguably made cycling less safe than before – was such a mess that the Council was anxious to close everything down in order to hide its mistake.

But maybe there’s another explanation. Could Southwark’s decision to place its first ever LTN in an inappropriate area have been influenced by the expectation of strong local support? Low Traffic Neighbourhoods are, after all, controversial: you wouldn’t push ahead with implementing one in an unsuitable area unless you were pretty sure you could overcome local opposition.

Dulwich has a high concentration of schools – nursery, primary and secondary, both state and private. We know that a well-established lobby group, Dulwich and Herne Hill Safe Routes to School (SRS), has supported the idea of road filters for many years. We have also established that the Council had regular meetings with a working group before, during and after Phase 3 of Our Healthy Streets Dulwich (January to April 2020) – a group “set up to help run the OHSD consultation process”, according to one of our local councillors. This working group included representatives from Dulwich and Herne Hill Safe Routes to School, Living Streets (a charity that has worked closely with the London Cycling Campaign since 2018 on promoting LTNs), the Dulwich Society and, towards the end, Calton Avenue residents’ association.

The working group’s role seems to have been informal and advisory – offering comments, for example, on the presentation that Southwark eventually put forward at the public meetings in February and March. No minutes of what they discussed are available. But the group’s links with the Council were sufficiently strong for its members to be given advance sight of the interim Phase 3 consultation results – results, both then and to this day, that have never been made public. Despite this lack of transparency, and the fact that the full results remain unpublished, Southwark still talks of this January to April 2020 consultation as evidence of community support, and a mandate for the current LTN measures.

It's not usual practice, as far as we know, for a council to hold private meetings with a small, select group of local lobbyists in the run-up to a public consultation – or to share confidential data with them. Did Southwark somehow get the impression from these off-the-record briefings that the local community was in favour of 24/7 closures? Did conversations over many months with this hand-picked and unrepresentative group encourage the Council to push ahead with a scheme that was so obviously flawed and unjust?

We haven’t so far heard of a working group advising the Council on the forthcoming May 2021 review, but will let you know if anything comes to light.