From: Cllr Harcourt Wesley
<wesley.harcourt@lbhf.gov.uk>
Sent: 01 September 2015 19:01
To: 'brian.mooney@abd.org.uk'
Subject: RE: Road safety measures and
consultation issues
Brian
Thanks
for this but to be clear I am not holding back on implementing the 20mph I am
just making sure
that we go through the correct channels
and that there is scope for residents to comment as matter
progresses.
Wesley
Councillor
Wesley Harcourt
Cabinet
Member for Environment, Transport & Residents Services
LB
Hammersmith & Fulham
King
Street
London
W6
9JU
-----Original
Message-----
From:
Brian Mooney - ABD [mailto:brian.mooney@abd.org.uk]
Sent:
31 August 2015 23:00
To:
Cllr Harcourt Wesley
Subject:
Road safety measures and consultation issues
Wesley
Thank
you for the opportunity to put forward suggestions for improving road safety
within LBHF.
I
feel you are very wise to hold back on implementing borough-wide 20mph speed
limits.
Although
you advise that 45% of the consultation respondents might support this, my
feeling is that this
support is likely to be shallow.
(I
ran the NO2ID campaign in LBHF, and noted high support for ID cards in opinion
polls just after 9/11.
This
support dropped to well under 50% as the public learned more about the scheme,
the costs and
practical difficulties.
You
might say that the initial support represented a knee-jerk feeling of wanting
to be secure - as
opposed to wanting ID cards per se.
Similarly,
the 'support' for the 20mph proposal is more a response to the limited and very
one-sided
account put across in LBHF's consultation
booklet, which might more accurately be described as a selling
document.
When
I was out with the TV crew, we found a lot of spontaneous opposition to the
proposal. The one
person that the TV crew eventually managed
to find who had supported the proposal, a cyclist from
Brackenbury
Village, said that on reflection, he would have voted differently!)
LBHF
pre-announced the consultation in September 2014, and may therefore have been
unaware of a
subsequent ruling in the
Supreme Court, [2014] UKSC 56, that a local authority consultation was
unlawful because it denied the public
essential information on which they could make an informed
decision.
The
law has requirements for procedural fairness, and there is other evidence that
it might have
inadvertently been broken.
That
borough-wide 20mph was part of the 2014 Labour manifesto could mean that LBHF
has fallen foul
of the expectation in the 1996 Education Act
when it sent a letter in your name to teachers and
schoolchildren. There is evidence
that by referring readers to such an overwhelmingly biased
consultation webpage, the
expectation of balance was not met.
There
is evidence of other irregularities, but as I am trying to keep this note
concise, I will not go into
detail. Suffice it to say, that if the
proposal for implementing borough-wide 20mph is adopted, I feel
there is the racing certainty that it will
be challenged, with all the attendant publicity.
In
summary, I feel that it is best to regard the consultation just completed as
advisory - and a learning
experience. The time and effort
will not be wasted if it identifies specific local road safety issues that
could objectively be addressed by tailored
measures.
I
feel that nobody would fault you if you re-tuned the focus of the consultation
onto measures that
would actually enjoy real support from both
the public and the police.
With
best wishes,
Brian
Mooney (ABD),
31
August 2015
(The
above is essentially my own perspective, so is sent in a personal capacity. I
have not discussed it
with ABD management so it should not be
taken as constituting any 'official' perspective within the
organisation.
Happy
to expand further, although I am away this week)
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