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Residents concern as South Norwood’s ‘culture war’ turns toxic

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Shots have been fired, at least metaphorical ones, on the frontline of a “culture war” in South Norwood, as the latest council consultations over Low Traffic Neighbourhoods come to a close tonight.

Concrete blocks and steel bollards have already replaced planters on some Croydon LTNs

Residents who support the traffic-reducing schemes accuse the opponents of LTNs of deliberately damaging property and of intimidating behaviour, and express concerns that what might have been a survey of the views of people living locally has been hijacked by vested interests, motoring lobbyists and others from across south London and beyond.

“There’s a real toxic and intimidating atmosphere surrounding discussion on the subject of the LTNs,” a resident in one of the areas subject to council consultations told Inside Croydon. The resident is so afraid of recriminations from the anti-LTNers that they asked for the identity to be withheld.

“Anyone expressing the mildest support for LTNs and efforts to improve road safety in South Norwood and prevent our residential roads being used as rat runs is quickly shouted down and insulted in the local Facebook forums.

“The rage around the issue has turned the Facebook page into a bit of a no-go area,” they say.

Perhaps a reflection that even the very term LTN is regarded as “toxic”, the council now calls them “Croydon Healthy Neighbourhoods”. There are two consultations on-going, one for Holmesdale Road, the other for Albert Road.

Both close tonight.

Similar surveys for Parsons Mead and Sutherland Road in Broad Green, and Dalmally Road, Elmers Road and Kemerton Road in Addiscombe, closed last month.

Silenced: more than 20 posters like this, paid for by local residents who support the LTN, have been destroyed and removed

In most cases, wooden planters were introduced during the first covid-19 lockdown last year to encourage more social distancing, open up road spaces and put an end to rat-runners using residential streets as high-speed short-cuts.

But the seemingly rustic and benign planters have become trigger points for motorists’ anger, and have been subjected to vandalism and damage.

Now Croydon wants to remove most of the planters and replace them with CCTV cameras, which the council claims makes the roads more “porous” (by allowing immediate access to emergency vehicles and local residents).

The Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras also offer a lucrative revenue stream, with £60 minimum fines for those without a local permit who ignore the no-entry signs. The cash-strapped council reckons it might generate £5million in such fines each year.

The council says its Healthy Neighbourhoods are “set up to make local streets quieter, safer and healthier”.

Of the changes proposed, they explain that they “aim to keep these schemes’ benefits while improving access for local people”. Once approved, the introduction of ANPRs will be deemed “on an experimental basis” for 18 months.

One residents’  group, on Holmesdale Road, has had posters printed and distributed around the area, appealing for locals to take part in the survey. “Please don’t let people who don’t live here decide our road should go back to being a rat run,” the poster says.

“Since the planters were put in last summer – which was paid for by TfL with government funding – we’ve seen a massive decrease in rat-running, fewer accidents, less pollution, reduced traffic noise and more plants and flowers on our street.

“With the LTN, Holmesdale Road is much safer for pedestrians, children walking to school, cyclists, drivers… everyone in fact.”

Too late: it took the council nearly a year to provide any mapping of its LTN areas and cycle routes to help persuade people to use the quieter routes

But the residents say that more than 20 of their posters, all paid for out of their own pockets, have been torn down and destroyed, as if some people wanted to silence the locals.

Then, at the weekend, leaflets were stuffed through letterboxes from the vocal “Open Our Roads” group, which has received funding from motoring lobbyists and support from Labour councillors Pat Ryan and Clive “Thirsty” Fraser.

The OOR leaflets fail to include any name or postal address for the shadowy organisation.

According to one recipient, “The leaflet claims to speak on behalf of the entirety of South Norwood.

“‘South Norwood Says No!’, proclaims their anti-LTN propaganda. That’s quite a claim. How they know the opinion of over 16,500 South Norwood residents?”

The resident says that “the OOR propaganda leaflet is stuffed full of lies designed to scaremonger residents into opposing ANPR camera trials”.

Among the blatantly false claims is that some motorists “have been fined tens of thousands of pounds per day”. To accumulate just £10,000-worth of fines, South Norwood’s wannabe Lewis Hamiltons would have to drive past ANPR cameras more than 160 times in a 24-hour period.

“It’s plainly, obviously, bull-shit,” according to another resident equally unimpressed by the desperate lengths that the OOR leaflet goes to.

“They fail to mention that the only people who get fined at all are those without a parking permit valid for the area. And anyone who gets an ANPR ticket will have ignored the road signs – just as with any other traffic offence.

Clive Fraser: the anti-LTN chair of Croydon’s Cycle Forum

“They appear to be sympathetic to law-breakers.”

And another resident said, “Not content with flooding residents with misinformation, the anti-LTNers are silencing those of us expressing support for the LTNs.

“About 20 posters, designed to inform residents about the council consultation and explain the benefits of the LTNs, were torn down just hours after being pinned to telegraph poles and planters on Holmesdale Road.

“The irony is that one of the arguments last year when the LTNs were first created was that they were in some way ‘undemocratic’ because residents hadn’t been consulted.

“Well, where’s the respect for democracy now?

“If they are sure the whole of South Norwood is on their side, why the need to censor our material? The truth is, of course, that if Open Our Roads had to debate on the basis of facts alone, they would lose hands down.”

Desperate: the Open Our Roads leaflet, distributed from an undisclosed address

Those residents who have embraced the schemes aimed at reducing the public’s dependency on cars, particularly for shorter journeys, feel that they have been handicapped in their support for the schemes by their local authority’s rushed and poorly managed introduction of the measures.

In a column in a national newspaper yesterday, Rupa Huq, MP for Ealing Central, claimed that in her borough, “The botched handling of LTNs were a key factor in the overthrow of the last leader of Ealing council.” Oooerr.

Huq wrote,  “These changes have divided communities and pitted borough against borough… This cack-handedness has not only killed off support for LTNs, it is harming the government’s hope of getting more people cycling. Rage at LTNs has turned residents against even logical examples of new infrastructure to help safe cycling.”

But Labour’s Huq appears to have swallowed some of the anti-LTNers falsehoods.

Writing in the Torygraph, she claimed, “Bromley sued Croydon after the latter dumped traffic on the former.”

Which is simply not true.

Bromley Council’s leader, Conservative Colin Smith, while refusing to take hundreds of thousands of pounds in Tory government funding for traffic-reducing measures in his borough, has made all sorts of claims in public, but there has never been any legal action against neighbouring authority Croydon over its LTNs in Crystal Palace.

“Colin Smith is like a whoopie cushion,” a Katharine Street source said today. “All the noise of a fart but without any product whatsoever.”

Leaving those supporting LTNs in their areas of Croydon hoping that Smith’s supporters, such as OOR, don’t leave a nasty smell once the council survey is completed.

Read more: The real reason behind opposition to Low Traffic Neighbourhoods


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