“On Monday, Oct 11th 2021, London Borough of Hounslow’s Council Leader, Steve Curran, issued a statement describing people in Chiswick as a “hardcore rump” and telling them to “grow up”. These inappropriate remarks have highlighted the ethical and technical vacuum within the leadership of Hounslow Council. His comments are not worthy of a person holding his position. The statement is a wilful and a blatant attempt to deflect the real criticism that is embedded within the Decision published last week by the Local Government Ombudsman that was critical of Hounslow Council. It is true, as Cllr. Curran claims, that a lack of record keeping was reported upon by the Ombudsman, but what Cllr. Curran seeks to ignore through his selective reading of the Decision is the following: 1. The Ombudsman raised a series of comments asking why the Council had not sought to quantify the demand for cycle movement through Turnham Green Terrace. The Ombudsman asked: § Where the evidence was that either Turnham Green Terrace or Devonshire Road was part of a published and integrated cycle network (as Hounslow’s evidence had suggested)?§ What further benefits would pedestrians gain from the vehicle access restrictions? § And, most tellingly, just what did the officers know about the amount of traffic diverted onto other routes and the impacts on those roads? Perhaps such work was done and the necessary records are missing, but the Ombudsman could not find them and Hounslow did not have the answers to these questions, which he identified as a serious failure in process. 2. The Ombudsman found that Hounslow’s consideration of Public Sector Equalities Duties (as defined in the Equality Act 2010) was general and cursory. He found no record of, and Hounslow could not supply, any evidence that it considered the potential impact of the road closures on groups with protected characteristics under the Act, other than those with disability. In particular, the Ombudsman pointed to an absence of any consideration of the impact on the elderly. The fact that the Ombudsman could not find any record of such matters being considered equates to no proper consideration of impact by either the officers or the councillors. Hence the fault was more that the lack of a record. 3. The final point the Ombudsman highlighted and Cllr Curran ignores is the contradiction between the paper the Council published in early May 2020, saying it would protect major roads, including B roads, and its subsequent action in using the Streetscape measures to close Turnham Green Terrace (the B491) to through traffic. The lack of any explanation for this contradiction is found to be a fault, and the contradiction remains a fact. The fact that there is no record is secondary. The lack of any evidence to support or answer the Ombudsman’s questions suggest serial failure by the Council in process and such serial failure very much indicates that the matters in the questions were not addressed, and thus by association the Council was at fault on all counts beyond record keeping. The Ombudsman’s primary duty is to identify failures in process, but the Council could not answer his searching questions. This was not because of a lack of record keeping per se, but because processes that should have been followed in making decisions were not and those decisions were taken without clear foundation. Cllr Curran continues to use Streetspace as smokescreen for failure. Two core foundations of Streetspace were encouraging active travel and reducing car access and use in local areas (‘modal shift’). There has been no data published to confirm that there has been a significant modal shift from car to cycling or walking as a result of Streetspace, and officers of the Council have conceded at committee that they do not have such evidence. What Chiswick residents know through experience, is that the so-called Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes (“LTNs”) within Streetspace nearly all result in traffic diverting onto roads, often residential, that are already busy, and with little or no modal shift this results in more delay and congestion. Some of this is local people being forced to make longer journeys around the LTN, especially in South Chiswick. The net outcome is increases in area-wide noise and pollution due to more stationary traffic (the worst pollution condition) and longer journeys than before. Ironically, the LTNs are probably doing the opposite of what climate activists want, adding to rather than reducing pollution. We don’t know this, as Hounslow Council has not provided any evidence of pollution levels, except for one station on Chiswick High Road.”
Mark Perry ● 1838d