Traffic in a jam: by 4.30pm yesterday, unrestricted traffic was building up along Sutherland Road, and residents who spoke to Inside Croydon were unhappy with the change
What has been the reaction of residents to the sudden removal, by order of a High Court judge, of motoring restrictions in Croydon’s former Low Traffic Neighbourhoods? We sent GABRIEL MacARTHUR along to two streets affected in Broad Green to find out
Last week, a High Court judge quashed the council orders that created six Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, ordering Croydon to shut down their penalty fine-generating cameras and to remove the signs restricting traffic.
Introduced in 2020, these schemes have been policed by Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras – ANPRs – since 2024, and were expected to generate more than £10million over four years, according to council reports, through £160-a-time fines for offenders.
The schemes ruled unlawful were Albert Road in South Norwood, Dalmally Road, Addiscombe, Elmers Road, South Norwood, Holmesdale Road, Selhurst, and Parsons Mead and Sutherland Road, both in Broad Green.
Since the decision was handed down last Wednesday, the cameras and road signs on Parsons Mead and Sutherland Road have been covered.
Until last week, only vehicles with resident or other permits have been allowed to use these residential streets, which run between Mitcham Road and London Road.
In contrast to the busy neighbouring high street, at 4pm yesterday Parsons Mead, possibly the most contentious of Croydon’s LTNs, stood still, only disturbed by the occasional car. A friendly landlady, who owns properties on Parsons Mead, told Inside Croydon that the restrictions had been costly and ineffective.
“I got 20 tickets in just three or four days,” she said. “When I’m dropping stuff off here, they make the signage hard to see and only warn you once you violate the zone.”
Our Parsons Mead landlady claimed that congestion levels had not changed since the cameras had been covered. “Made no difference at all,” she said. “Emissions are actually lower now because people don’t need to drive all the way round.”
Black out: council contractors have spent the past week covering up the LTN road signs. The cost of this emergency response to the court order, and likely cost of the signs’ removal, has yet to be disclosed by Croydon Council
We also spoke to a care worker in their 50s, who said he had been driving around south London for almost 40 years.
“If anything, they made the traffic worse,” he claimed.
“I was fined in the South Norwood zone and I’m not the only person who’s been caught out on that, it’s ambiguous with how or where you can turn into certain roads and stuff.”
Not everyone had found it difficult to follow road sign restrictions. One middle-aged resident of the now very busy Sutherland Road was critical of the recent increase in vehicle congestion on his street, even though he had himself been subject to an LTN fine in the past.
“Once more people find out they can drive here, it’s going to get even worse,” he predicted, even as cars whizzed down the road.
Peak rush hour was yet to come.
Read more: Perry accused of ‘shameless lying’ as he abandons LTN appeal
Read more: Council failed to include High Court LTN case on risk register
Read more: London’s toxic air is ‘a public health emergency’ says charity
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2026, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for an EIGHTH time in nine years, in Private Eye magazine’s annual round-up of civic cock-ups
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Although a non-driver, I for one am happy about the end of the Holmesdale Road LTN which is very near my home. To the extent that it worked at all it diverted traffic away from a large, airy, open street little used by pedestrians to the crowded, busy High Street, where the air pollution affects a hundred times as many people, and where buses and essential services are frequently delayed by traffic congestion.
The one person I know who was fined was helping a charity with which we are both involved by collecting a person at Norwood Junction. She hadn’t been in the area for some years, and instinctively turned into Holmesdale Road for a few metres, before turning off again. Despite an appeal from the charity, this cost her £80, another instance of no good deed going unpunished. Good riddance!
No wonder the local residents are unhappy with the removal of the LTNs as speeding, rat-running fume-belchers return to their previously peaceful roads !?!
Funny how the people who hate LTNs with a venom bordering on psychopathy are almost always also gammon on any number of other issues too. Spluttering “THERE AGAINST ARE RITES” about everything. Absolute jokes.
Probably Deform supporters who are well known for believing in the rights of the individual, providing you are white and born in the UK.
I am not a driver and speaking as a pedestrian, I truly feel that I am risking my life when walking down many of the streets in Croydon, speeding vehicles that seem to regard the roads as a race track, traffic pollution, cyclists on the payement (and not just kids).
Only yesterday I witnessed a near-collision between a car and a cyclist.
When you cross a road at a crossing you often can’t be sure you are not going to be run over and I was recently hit by a vehicle on a zebra crossing, which failed to stop and I was not being reckless, luckily I did’nt sustain any injuries,. You take your life in your hands when crossing side roads! Perry must go in May and be replaced by a mayor who actually has the power to make the roads safer in Croydon.
The Sutherland Road situation could be improved by making it one way from Canterbury Road. The bottlenecks occur due to parking on both sides of the road, and one always had a battle to make one’s way along that road, particularly at the main road end. Perhaps then another road could be made one way in the other direction back towards Canterbury Road. Perry’s money-spinning scheme and his attitude to Croydon is of no use to us! Roll on the election in May! Goodbye Perry, and take Philp with you! Fancy saying that as long as Perry is Mayor, there will be no LTNs! What a weak election ‘promise’ – and how many promises he has broken! I shall not list them, because we all know what they are!
It’s early days yet. Waze is only beginning to revise its online route maps, and Google seems not to have started. Once sat-nav systems are updated and local knowledge kicks in, every Tom, Dick and Harriet – truck, van and cab drivers, delivery moped riders, commuters, shoppers and school run mums and dads – will turn these streets back into noisy, smelly, unhealthy rat runs
I still like the title of this Inside Croydon article, which refers to rat runners as “traffic creeps” !
“Traffic creep” is a great description of P**** M*****
LTN has turned a hectic part of London into a peaceful village where I live in Hackney. The transformation has been profound and hopefully permanent.