Re: Lib Dems Accuse Ealing Council of Giving e-bike Companies a Free Ride
As a resident of Chiswick W4 who actually voted for the Liberal Democrats at the last council election, I believe it is vital that we strip away the superficial political theater and look at the hard legislative facts of this e-bike network crisis.While it is easy for the Liberal Democrats to hunt for cheap headlines by accusing the current administration of giving companies a "free ride," their public demands reveal a profound lack of due diligence regarding how highways legislation actually functions.The uncomfortable truth is that if the Liberal Democrats were running Ealing Council today, they would be trapped in the exact same operational deadlock.Until the very recent shift toward physical impounding, individual borough councils have been forced to try and police high-tech, fluid dockless fleets using Section 137 of the Highways Act 1980 (Wilful Obstruction). Under strict UK contract and highways law, an officer cannot simply photograph a bike and hand down an instantaneous fine. Section 137 requires the council to prove continuous, wilful intent.To make an FPN legally airtight under current guidelines, an evidence log must show that the exact same bike has been causing an obstruction for a minimum of a two-hour window, verified by matching photos taken at either side of that timeline. While the council suggests the public can do this via reporting apps like Love Clean Streets, this is a total practical non-starter. Expecting residents to act as unpaid detectives—returning to a coordinate two hours later to take a second photo—is an administrative illusion. Even if a resident does it, such uncalibrated citizen metadata would easily be torn to shreds by corporate legal teams in a civil appeals court.Demanding aggressive "enforcement action" under an archaic 1980 framework that treats corporate fleets like individual littering offenses is a logistical dead end. This unworkable evidence trap is the sole reason why boroughs across London have experienced a very high enforcement failure rate regarding individual penalty notices.While some proactive authorities like Hammersmith & Fulham have successfully bypassed this by deploying dedicated teams to physically seize and impound hundreds of dumped assets directly, relying on a reactive, bike-by-bike street clear-up does nothing to fix the systemic breakdown.Instead of weaponizing a broken administrative loop to score local political points, our representatives should be engaging with the actual structural engineering required to fix our streets. The passage of The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 has fundamentally rewritten the rules.Transport for London (TfL) and the Department for Transport (DfT) are actively drafting the secondary legislation right now to implement a single, pan-London licensing regime, which is expected to go live on the ground by summer 2027. The legal power over micromobility networks is officially shifting away from fragmented individual borough councils and landing squarely under a single regional authority.Crucially, this landmark 2026 Act goes far beyond parking controls; it is a total constitutional reset for London's infrastructure. By granting the Mayoral Strategic Authority enhanced powers of intervention, TfL will finally possess the legislative teeth to override local borough vetoes and construct the long-delayed cycle lane on Kensington High Street.By permanently linking Cycleway 9 (C9) with Cycleway 3 (C3), commuters will finally see a completed, continuous cycle route running seamlessly all the way from Brentford in the west to Barking in the east.Borough-level MoUs, border geofence lockouts, and localized vetoes are a failed, fragmented model. To deliver a safe public realm for pedestrians and an efficient network for cyclists, we must stop using transport safety as a local political football and support a centralized, unified transport architecture managed directly by City Hall.
Hans Lund-Sorensen ● 2d1 Comments ● 2d