The LTN Saga Drags On
Labour’s struggle with Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs)/Safer School Streets continues.
Labour has a fixation with great sounding names for new policies which generate cash. Who doesn’t want safer streets? Trouble is that they are fixated by what sounds good rather than what does good.
Preventing cars from entering streets with schools will lower congestion on one street, but simply displace it to another.
It will also mean that fewer cars will park on the yellow zig-zags. This is positive. It will make exiting school safer for children.
The trouble is that the council already had that power, they didn’t need legislation or a new policy or hundreds of hours of staff time. A Traffic Enforcement Officer can currently patrol the road outside of a school and issue a PCN for anyone parking dangerously. Quite why, after nearly eight years in power Mayor Fiaz has not done this is anyone’s guess.
Perhaps it is because LTNs and ‘safer streets’ are currently the fashionable causes amongst the greener parts of the chattering classes.
It begins to look a bit performative. Don’t use the power you have to address a problem you have identified. Instead, jump on a bandwagon, popular with your buddies; do it in such a way as to virtue signal to your supporters; and spend money.
To recap. Fiaz and her buddies announced a new LTN for the West Ham Park area.
Labour mayoral candidate, Forhad Hussain opposed this.
Hussain won the support of the Labour Group.
Fiaz knows better and she pushed the policy through cabinet; responsibility for implementation was delegated to officers.
Then a Scrutiny Commission ‘called in’ the decision. This means that back benchers will review the decision. They can’t overturn it but can ask that it be reconsidered.
What we hear from inside the council is that officers, intending to be helpful, offered to slow walk the process. There is always plenty of work to do; they could recanvas opinion in the West Ham Park area; they could progress the admin but make no permanent changes until a new mayor was in place.
It seems that they have been told in no uncertain terms that this will not happen. Any reference back to the cabinet will see Fiaz and her dwindling band of allies force the matter through with the aim of implementing the new LTN before the May election.
You might almost think that there are some people in the Labour Party who are determined to undermine the chances of the Labour candidate by pushing unpopular policies right before voters go to the polls.
What is worse for Hussain is that there is a Fiaz remnant from the chattering classes who will outlast her and will be a ready made thorn in his side in the event that he is elected.
It’s almost as if there are some in the Labour Party who would prefer to see Mehmood Mirza in power than Forhad Hussain. We can only think that this is a case of sour grapes.