Dulwich Streetspace Traffic Analysis Errors: an open letter to the Director of Environment (14 November 2021)
Dear Mr Clubb,
We refer to the Dulwich Streetspace Traffic Analysis Report (Appendix C), published on 17 September 2021. This report was the only traffic analysis report included in the decision-maker’s reports package and, as such, was central to the decision to move these experimental schemes towards permanence. It contains the fundamentally important claim that, since their introduction, these ‘experimental’ LTNs had reduced traffic in the area overall, and this was surely a seminal component of the decision to retain rather than discard them.
We were therefore shocked to discover that, on 9 November, Cllr Andy Simmons confirmed that a key piece of data claiming a 61% reduction in traffic flows in Turney Road should, in fact, have been reported as a significant increase. It also strikes us as extremely odd that a politician from another ward should announce this error rather than an official from the relevant department, and that the Turney Road Residents’ Association has not been informed.
This mistake was communicated to Cllr Catherine Rose and Jonathan Hamston at a meeting with the Turney Road Residents’ Association on 15 July and subsequently confirmed in writing to you, Cllr Catherine Rose, Cllr Kieron Williams, Streetspace Southwark, and Jonathan Hamston by the Turney Road Residents’ Association on 18 July but officials did not respond.
We are appalled that it has taken four months for Southwark Council to admit that it has mixed up and misreported traffic flow monitoring data in the East section of Turney Road (between Burbage Road and Dulwich Village) and West section (between Burbage Road and Croxted Road) of Burbage Road, and two months since it was published on 17 September.
We also find it remarkable that this error was only publicly corrected two days before the end of the statutory consultation period, the late timing of which, given how long the Council has known there was an error, one can only assume was designed to influence the outcome of this process in favour of the council’s position.
More fundamentally, the manner in which this vital piece of information has been communicated raises questions about how long councillors and officials have known about this error, and when, if ever, they were planning to make this knowledge public. These are questions that go to the heart of the probity, transparency and ethical standards under which the current Southwark administration is operating. As this and other incidents have repeatedly demonstrated, the Council’s behaviour falls well short of Southwark Council’s own Code of Corporate Governance, in terms of openness, transparency and behaving with integrity. What else does your Highways team know that they are choosing not to share?
As both the Turney Road Residents’ Association and Burbage Road Residents’ Association again highlighted on multiple occasions in August and September, the Council’s report using June 2021 data had transposed the results for the East and West sections, so that the stated reduction in average daily traffic (-61%, -2941) for Turney Road West was in fact for Turney Road East, which is logical given the timed closures for that section.
The reality is that Turney Road West has seen an increase in traffic commensurate with the reported 18% increase in Burbage Road, which is an entirely predictable consequence of the direction of timed measures in both streets, particularly those applying to the 3pm – 6pm phase, and this error would have been glaringly obvious to Council officials right from the outset, and given the excellent analytics which the Burbage Road Residents’ Association provided on this matter on 4 September.
This error is compounded by the failure to factor in the 8% reduction in overall motor traffic levels across Southwark from June 2019 to June 2021 when calculating the overall impact on traffic of the Dulwich LTNs. Equally startling is this report’s failure to include the increase in traffic on Dulwich Common, a key “external road” along the southern edge of the Dulwich LTN, despite a stated intention in the Interim Monitoring Report that traffic data on this key boundary road would be analysed. Given these omissions and calculation errors, it seems highly likely that the LTNs, far from producing a decrease in traffic, have caused an overall increase in traffic volumes, to which anyone living in the area would attest.
In the Interim Monitoring Report published in July 2021, the Council made the claim that cycling in Calton Avenue had increased by 231% since the Streetspace measures were introduced. Using Southwark Council’s own monitoring data from June 2020, prior to the closure of Calton Avenue to motorised traffic, One Dulwich were able to show that the 231% claim resulted from a highly misleading choice of baseline data, and that the actual increase in cycling resulting from the closures on a true like for like basis was 8% or just 64 cycles a day. This misrepresentation was communicated to the Council in early September but it has never been acknowledged by the Council and we would ask you to do so now.
The Council continues to refuse to publish the raw data on which calculations in its Monitoring Reports were made or the methodology used, despite repeated requests from the Dulwich Alliance and others to publish it. This is also in spite of Council Leader Cllr Kieron Williams committing on 19 July this year, in a public meeting with Dulwich residents, that raw data and the methodology used to calculate the Council’s analysis of the LTNs would be published in order for the public to “have trust and faith in the numbers”.
Given the scale and scope of the errors we have already identified in this report, it raises serious questions about the accuracy of all the data published in it and the veracity of the overall conclusion of the report – that traffic in the area has fallen substantially.
Two consultations have now been held, one of which was ordered by statute, where both have been marred by seriously erroneous reporting. It is difficult for anyone to view the Council’s refusal to confirm and address the errors we have reported as anything other than a deliberate attempt to hide the fact that the LTN vision for Dulwich has been a complete failure.
It is also impossible to see how the decision-maker, Cllr Catherine Rose, would have reached the conclusions she did on these schemes, if the full and accurate traffic data had been in her possession at the time.
We therefore call on you, as the Director responsible for Southwark Highways Department that produced these errors and omissions to:
- suspend the traffic orders implementation process;
- recall the Interim Monitoring Report and September traffic analysis report;
- launch an internal investigation into the extent to which the data in these documents is flawed; and,
- once they have been corrected, republish them with a full set of the raw data and methodology used.
We would ask that this investigation also considers all the faults, omissions and considerations identified in One Dulwich’s document ‘Why the data doesn’t add up’ published on the One Dulwich website on 5 November (https://www.onedulwich.uk/news/why-the-data-doesnt-add-up)
We look forward to receiving your urgent response by close of business on Tuesday 16 November with details of the immediate actions you propose to take to rectify these issues.
Thank you.
The Dulwich Alliance
Response to the Dulwich Streetspace Review from Dulwich Alliance businesses (8 July 2021)
Dear Councillors,
Response to the Dulwich Streetspace Review from businesses and business associations in the Dulwich Alliance.
We are writing to you on behalf of the hundreds of shops and businesses in Dulwich Village, East Dulwich and the wider Dulwich area to protest at the lack of consultation to date with us about the impact of the Dulwich LTNs road closures and traffic restrictions on our businesses and livelihoods.
Many of us submitted formal objections within the statutory six-month period after the ETOs were introduced in June and September 2020 and have written on numerous occasions to councillors and council officers to highlight the devastating consequences these measures are having on our ability to trade.
The assumption is that all difficulties have been caused by Covid-19. In fact, the far bigger challenge to recovery has been the road closures, restrictions and parking measures. The Council’s High Street Recovery Fund asks for great ideas to transform Southwark’s high streets, but our collective great idea – that the road closures and restrictions should be removed – is ignored.
What makes it worse is that the Council keeps saying that restricting vehicles is good for business. The exact opposite is the case. When it comes to high streets, TfL’s studies show that car-users spend significantly more per visit than people walking or cycling and that cyclists are the lowest spenders of all, whether per visit or over time. While there are a few shops that can happily survive with just local shoppers who walk and cycle, many more are ‘destination shops’ that rely on visits from people who live much farther away and who depend – because public transport is poor – on using their cars. Shoppers like these are put off by closures, fines, increased congestion and higher pollution levels.
It seems that the Council is doing all it can to stop people shopping locally and to force them instead to shop online. This, as you know, means further dependence on delivery vans, which are greater polluters overall than private cars.
Businesses other than shops are suffering. Customers can no longer reach sports clubs, exercise classes and dance classes on time, because journeys have become too onerous or unpredictable and because the risk of fines is too great. After-school activities and clubs before 6pm are being cancelled. All this is having a negative impact on health and wellbeing across the wider area and works directly against the Council’s policy of increasing physical activity and reducing levels of obesity.
At the beginning of the Dulwich Review consultation, the Council said that businesses were an important stakeholder group. It promised to hold meetings with them, as part of the Review, to discuss the impact of the traffic measures. Nothing has happened. Despite repeated and increasingly desperate emails asking to be heard, meetings are only now starting to be scheduled.
We are putting on record your refusal to date to listen to what local business-owners are saying about the impact of the road measures on their ability to trade.
Yours sincerely,
Dulwich Village Association, representing more than 25 shops and businesses
Melbourne Grove Vale Traders Against Closures, representing 44 shops and businesses
East Dulwich Independent Business Association, representing more than 100 shops and businesses
Dulwich Ballet School
Grafton Dance Centre
Dulwich Sports Club
Premier Plant Hire, Herne Hill
Another Dulwich road closure: request for clarification from the Director of Environment (8 June 2021)
Dear Mr Clubb,
Gilkes Place, London SE21
We write to seek clarification as to the legal basis of Southwark Council’s decision to close Gilkes Place, London SE21, without prior notice or consultation, and your plans to consult with the public on its future status as a road within the Dulwich Village LTN scheme.
Process applied to this temporary closure and statement of reason
The public notice advising of the temporary prohibition of traffic in Gilkes Place was issued and came into force on 20 May. The notice advised that its immediate closure was necessary “in the interest of public safety”. However residents who have been waiting for this road to reopen after the removal of hoardings placed there by building contractors are mystified as to what this undefined safety concern relates to, as there are no plans in the foreseeable future for the former S. G. Smith site to be redeveloped. None of the reasons given under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 Section 14(2) would appear to apply.
The public notice also appears to have been issued at short notice, triggered by the removal of the hoarding around the building site on 19 May by the outgoing contractors. This is evidenced by a Twitter exchange on 19 May between Cllr. Richard Leeming and a resident of Gilkes Crescent, in which Cllr. Leeming says that he is “really shocked to discover that Conways started removing the hoarding on Gilkes Place this morning … we have been asking for a permanent solution for months”. This is also causing concern as to whether there is an undisclosed reason for the closure, a permanent solution being very different to a temporary one “in the interest of public safety”, and one which would require a robust consultation process to be undertaken beforehand.
This notice was replaced on 3 June by a new temporary prohibition of traffic, this time citing Section 14(1) of the Road Traffic Regulation Act, stating that this temporary closure will continue from 18 June for an unspecified amount of time. As the sub-sections 1 a and 1 c do not apply, please advise as to what the danger is to the public, that the Council considers to be a likelihood, that sub-section 1 b refers to.
Access for emergency vehicles
The 20 May notice stated that the prohibitions did not apply in respect of any vehicle being used for fire brigade, ambulance or police purposes, yet the barrier that has been installed is a hard closure with concrete blocks preventing emergency vehicles from accessing Gilkes Crescent from Gilkes Place and vice-versa. The 3 June order makes no mention of maintaining access for emergency vehicles.
As you know, all three emergency services have requested that soft closures, such as cameras, be used instead of hard closures. As Gilkes Crescent already has a barrier that makes access difficult from Calton Avenue, a hard closure of Gilkes Place can only increase the risk of danger to public safety, not reduce it. Please will you advise why hard closures have been used, why access for emergency vehicles has not been maintained, and when you will remove this temporary hard closure in order to allow emergency vehicle access?
Inclusion in Dulwich LTNs Review consultation and survey
The residents we have spoken to in Gilkes Crescent advise us that while they would like Gilkes Place to be reopened, they are concerned that were Calton Avenue to remain closed to vehicles at the Dulwich Village junction, this would have an impact on vehicles using Gilkes Place. So the future of Gilkes Place must be considered as part of the wider traffic scheme and not in isolation.
Similarly, residents of East Dulwich Grove are concerned that by blocking Gilkes Place, vehicles entering and exiting Gilkes Crescent can only do so via East Dulwich Grove, which is already suffering badly from traffic displaced as a consequence of the closure of the Dulwich Village junction and related traffic restrictions.
Dulwich Village Ward Councillor Richard Leeming advised a local resident on 21 May that “the decision has been taken to maintain the closure of Gilkes Place temporarily until it can be considered as part of the Dulwich Review later in the summer” and that “we now have a timetable for making a decision alongside the other decisions being made about traffic flows in Dulwich”.
Gilkes Place is not part of the current Dulwich Village LTNs Review, and questions about it do not, therefore, appear in the Review Survey. Please advise if Cllr Leeming is correct in his assertion that Gilkes Place is to be part of the Review and, if so, how and when residents throughout the consultation zone will be made aware of this, and how the Survey will be updated to enable them to make their views about Gilkes Place known.
We wrote to you on 27 May highlighting the extent to which the Review Survey is flawed in a significant number of ways and needs to be revised and replaced. We have not yet received a reply to this. The need to give residents the opportunity to comment on Gilkes Crescent and Gilkes Place provides an additional reason for revising and replacing the Survey.
An area-wide solution to traffic and travel in the Dulwich area
The Dulwich Alliance has been making the case for many months that Southwark Council’s piecemeal approach to traffic measures isn’t fair and doesn’t work. We take this opportunity again to urge the Council to stop dividing the community and start having an honest conversation about an area-wide solution to traffic and travel that meets the needs of the whole community, not just the aspirations of a few.
Please do not simply turn this email into a formal complaint, as was the case with our email to you of 27 May. While we appreciate that the process of formal complaint puts pressure on the Council to respond in a detailed and considered manner, and we welcome initiation of the process, we are concerned that the time periods permitted by the complaint process allow the Council to delay giving a response. Clearly, because the deadline of the online Review Survey is July 11, we need your urgent response to all the issues we have raised in this email and our email on 27 May.
The positive role you played in your former role as Assistant Director of Environment and Community Safety at Sutton Council encourages us to hope that you will take a more constructive and conciliatory position than some of your colleagues at Southwark have shown so far. We would very much welcome a conversation with you to start working towards a better and fairer solution in the Dulwich area.
Yours sincerely,
The Dulwich Alliance www.dulwichalliance.org
306 Medical Centre, Lordship Lane www.306medicalcentre.nhs.uk
Burgage Road Residents’ Association (burbagera@gmail.com)
Concerned Croxted Road Residents @AirCroxted
Dulwich Ballet School www.dulwichballet.co.uk, info@dulwichballet.co.uk
Dulwich Sports Club www.dulwichsports.co.uk
Dulwich Village Association (representing shops and businesses in Dulwich Village)
Dulwich Village, College Road and Woodyard Lane Residents’ Association www.dulwichra.org.uk
East Dulwich Grove Residents www.eastdulwichgroveresidents.org, eastdulwichgroveresidents@gmail.com, @east_grove
East Dulwich Independent Business Association (representing more than 100 businesses in East Dulwich)
Grafton Dance Centre www.graftondancecentre.co.uk, info@graftondancecentre.co.uk
Melbourne Grove Vale Traders Against Closures
One Dulwich (with more than 2,000 supporters area-wide) www.onedulwich.uk
Formal complaint to the Director of Environment about the Dulwich LTNs Review Survey (28 May 2021)
Dear Mr Clubb
Formal complaint relating to Dulwich LTNs Review Survey
On behalf of the Dulwich Alliance, an area-wide alliance of local residents’ associations, business organisations, health centres, care service providers, societies and organisations (including One Dulwich, which represents 2,000 residents living in Dulwich and on roads affected by the LTNs), we are writing to complain formally about the scope, process, methodology and content of the recently published Dulwich LTNs Consultation Review Survey.
This survey is the principal means by which Southwark Council aims to obtain the public’s views on a range of experimental traffic measures that were introduced, without consultation, nearly 12 months ago and during the intervening period. However, the process and methodology of this delayed consultation is flawed in a significant number of ways that undermine its impartiality and validity.
We wrote on 18 March, two months before the public consultation was launched, on behalf of the Dulwich Alliance, to the leader of Southwark Council, Cllr Kieron Williams, raising our concerns about the consultation, requesting reassurance that the consultation would be independently run, would not contain leading questions, and would be carried out transparently, applying best practice guidelines provided by the Consultation Institute.
We had previously written a letter to Cllr Williams on 7 February recommending that the Council employ independent, professional public consultation specialists to carry out this consultation. These requests were prompted by widespread concern about confirmation biased questions and misreporting of results relating to previous consultations (notably Our Healthy Streets: Dulwich Phase 2 – see our report). No response was received by the Dulwich Alliance from Cllr Williams to either of these communications, although Cllr Williams did indicate to the chair of a residents’ association, in membership of the Dulwich Alliance, who wrote in a similar vein, that he had “forwarded your suggestions on the review process to the team who are developing the review”.
The following is a summary of some of the problems and this list is by no means exhaustive. We are obtaining professional advice from consultation specialists on the full extent and implication of these issues and will publish their findings in due course. In the meantime, we urge the Council to respond and react without delay.
Summary list of key faults and issues of concern:
Process and scope
- Unexplained pre-Review requirement to register to take part in the Review Consultation and subsequent reversal of this requirement, creating confusion about eligibility.
- Undefined scope of Survey in terms of geography, eligibility and weighting of responses – eg do the responses of residents living in the LTNs carry more weight than those living outside the LTNs and where exactly are the boundaries?
- No requirement to state age of respondents and no minimum age for respondents, so no way of differentiating in the results between responses from elderly residents and responses from toddlers.
- Invitation to children to participate in the survey without age-appropriate data protection or survey questions, or parental supervision/signature.
- Alteration of the online survey after publication and different numbering of questions of paper v online versions.
- Lack of respondent verification measures, allowing multiple entries and potential for results to be skewed.
- Anomalies in the distribution of paper surveys and confusion about the purpose and use of ‘unique identifier’ numbers that are ‘linked to a specific address’, which have been provided to some households but not others and which some households have received in greater quantity than residents living there.
- Lack of availability of paper survey questionnaires from, for example, public libraries, as in previous consultations.
- Bespoke briefings for schools which, combined with no minimum age restrictions, indicate the Council is seeking to influence the survey outcome from that section of the community. No such bespoke briefings appear to be available for other community segments, such as older people and those with disabilities.
Lack of quantitative data
- No traffic volume, traffic pollution, public transport or other monitoring data available to enable responses to be informed by quantitative data.
- No Equality Impact Assessment to enable questions or responses to be informed by evidence of the impact of traffic measures on groups with protected characteristics, as defined by the Equality Act 2010.
- No information about impact of traffic measures on the expeditious movement of vehicles or resilience of the road traffic network (with reference to the Traffic Management Act 2004).
Biased methodology
- The survey demonstrates confirmation bias in that it is anchored in aims no-one could disagree with.
- Framing bias in how questions in the survey are asked, order bias in how responses are listed, and outcome bias in the choice of answers offered.
- Presentation and feedback bias in the way options are presented, the lack of scope for comments on certain options and the lack of opportunity to link comments relating to different options.
- Lack of defined options for people to select from – eg ‘a different kind of measure’ is listed as opposed to, for example, ‘ANPR cameras instead of planters’.
- Lack of questions on the negative impact of measures, so not providing a fair balance of positive versus negative impacts
- Lack of opportunity to express a view on the wider scheme as a whole
- Lack of independent management of the survey, scrutiny of responses or verification of results.
- No transparency about the governance arrangements applicable or the decision-making process that will follow.
A simple assessment of these faults by the Consultation Institute, who advise many Councils on how to ensure public consultations follow best practice and are legally compliant with the Gunning Principles, indicates that the Dulwich LTNs consultation has “many significant vulnerabilities”, making it particularly vulnerable to legal challenge.
Given the extent and seriousness of these faults, we urge the Council to withdraw this Survey, revise it and, after correcting its many and serious flaws, replace it. If this is done quickly, there is still time to restart and complete the survey within the 18-month time limit legally set for this to be done.
We recognise that the many faults listed above may have arisen by mistake rather than intention and that, as a responsible local government authority, you will wish to rectify the situation as quickly as possible.
Yours sincerely
The Dulwich Alliance www.dulwichalliance.org
306 Medical Centre, Lordship Lane www.306medicalcentre.nhs.uk
Burgage Road Residents’ Association (burbagera@gmail.com)
Concerned Croxted Road Residents @AirCroxted
Dulwich Ballet School www.dulwichballet.co.uk, info@dulwichballet.co.uk
Dulwich Sports Club www.dulwichsports.co.uk
Dulwich Village Association (representing shops and businesses in Dulwich Village)
Dulwich Village, College Road and Woodyard Lane Residents’ Association www.dulwichra.org.uk
East Dulwich Grove Residents www.eastdulwichgroveresidents.org, eastdulwichgroveresidents@gmail.com, @east_grove
East Dulwich Independent Business Association (representing more than 100 businesses in East Dulwich)
Grafton Dance Centre www.graftondancecentre.co.uk, info@graftondancecentre.co.uk
Melbourne Grove Vale Traders Against Closures
One Dulwich (with 2,000 supporters area-wide) www.onedulwich.uk
An open letter to the Leader of Southwark Council (7 February 2021)
Dear Councillor Williams
At the end of the session of the Cabinet Meeting on 2 February that was devoted to the 700+ signature petition (to end the 24/7 closures around Dulwich and implement an area-wide, camera-controlled permit scheme), you highlighted that views are strongly held in Dulwich on both sides, and that there was a “need to find a way of coming to a consensus view” through a review process that “brings people together”. We agree. We suggest that there is, in fact, a lot more common ground than people realise, but it is not being allowed to surface at the moment because of the rancour this issue is causing.
The need to reach a consensus has always been the position of the Dulwich Alliance and One Dulwich. However, with opposing views so strongly held, the only way this can realistically be achieved is through an impartial and transparent resolution process. Unfortunately, the proposed ‘Dulwich Area Community Forum’ chaired by a Council-appointed ‘Area Champion’, mentioned by Cllr Rose at the Cabinet meeting as being under consideration, would obviously not be impartial and so simply cannot achieve that. It would be extremely unhelpful both for the community and for the Council if another consultation simply repeated and further entrenched existing polarised positions.
Instead we propose that either the Council establishes a public inquiry, or that an independent, professionally qualified arbitration specialist, such as a chartered arbitrator or an accredited resolution specialist, be appointed to carry this out. For this to work, the arbitrator would obviously have to be subject neutral as well as impartial, and have the broad support of the community.
This would ensure that those affected (be that negatively or positively) by the Orders are allowed to make their representations and have their views heard. It would also provide the Council with impartial direction on how to proceed in a way that meets the Council’s objectives of reducing through traffic and pollution and encouraging walking and cycling (which everyone supports), but which also balances the different needs of the wider community. In fact, we believe that it is only by following an independent and transparent process that the Council can ensure acceptance of the outcome by all interested parties.
There appears to have been little by way of timely studies into traffic levels or air quality within the locality before the Orders were introduced. Added to this, the experiment is being undertaken during a time in which traffic conditions and pollution levels are not representative of what they were before the COVID-19 pandemic, or indeed are likely to be after the pandemic. This further underlines the need for an independent investigation, as clearly any evidence gleaned from this experiment will not be sufficient to underpin any future permanent measures.
We know that, as Leader of the Council, you put equality and fairness at the heart of all you do, and that you want to build a better future for everyone in the borough. We urge you to consider seriously this route of independent investigation. It provides a way forward that builds on common ground among people in Dulwich with different views, and a way out of the current community relations quagmire that we all find ourselves in.
Yours sincerely
The Dulwich Alliance www.dulwichalliance.org
306 Medical Centre, Lordship Lane
Burbage Road Residents’ Association
Concerned Croxted Road Residents
Dulwich Sports Club
Dulwich Village Association (representing more than 30 shops and businesses in Dulwich Village)
Dulwich Village, College Road and Woodyard Lane Residents’ Association
East Dulwich Independent Business Association (representing more than 100 businesses in East Dulwich)
Elm Lodge surgery, Burbage Road
Melbourne Grove Vale Traders Against Closures
One Dulwich (with more than 1,800 supporters area-wide)