Response to a letter from Councillor Nick Kemp

On this page is the letter several people have received from the council. Alongside is a response to each part.

The council starts by using the responses to the CommonPlace consultation as the primary reason for the removal of the Heaton LTN. The use of metrics from Commonplace is unfortunately filled with issues and caveats that the council have ignored. Firstly, there is no guarantee that the respondees were local, or even had any actual interest in the Heaton LTN specifically or Heaton itself. From the public consultation feedback:

“We cannot say that these contributions are representative of all those with a connection to, or interest in, the Safe Heaton trial measures area, but nor are they intended to be. This is largely due to the self-selection of contributors and the ability of contributors to make multiple comments.”

There is no way to prove these ‘contributions’ were from people with any direct interest in Heaton as there was no validation of address, much less that they were made by people whose environment was directly affected by these changes.

Secondly, by quoting the ‘2380 contributions’ the implication is that these should all be of equal merit, whereas that number included counting both number of comments and the reactions to comments – up to 80% of the count on one question were made up of reactions – and 70% of the figure quoted by the council is passive participation as the actual comments only numbered 554, made by a total of 226 people.

The fact that so much weight was placed upon reactions is troubling. No comment on the Heaton Park View question gained more than 11 likes, and the average reactions per comment was 4.1 (3.9 for positive comments, 4.2 for negative) - and with such low engagement per comment it would be easy for a single user to have a disproportionate effect on the outcome.

On the Heaton Park View question, for example, there were 383 reactions to negative comments and 279 reactions to positive comments; there were 91 negative comments - the difference in engagement is barely one click per comment; the fact that one person systematically clicking every negative comment could completely change the outcome is not reassuring and does not suggest this is a useful metric, and certainly not one to be relied on for legal decision making.

Furthermore, as stated in the council documentation, there was the ability to contribute multiple times - 1 in 6 of the responses to the Heaton Park View closure was a multiple contribution. The Safer Streets document states "Contributors were also able to make multiple agreements with other comments." It is not clear whether this means people could 'react' many times to a single comment futher boosting their influence, but even if not, with more than one email account it would not be hard to do so.

People were also pasting identical comments:
https://safeheatontrials.commonplace.is/contributions/6356a3c6c0a58200127eb207
https://safeheatontrials.commonplace.is/contributions/6356a3c5c0a58200127eb205
which presumably attracted the same people voting on them both too.

It is also telling that the parts of the scheme with the lowest comment to reaction ratio were those that affected commuter cut-throughs, and which were also those where the sentiment tended towards disagreement with the schemes. A bit of clicking and you get the answer you want with minimum effort; that it could be gamed with such a low bar is quite frankly ridiculous for a what is being treated as a binding public consultation.

From the above analysis it's fairly safe to say that the engagement process falls somewhat short of that outline in the Government documenation on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods: "Engagement, especially on schemes where there is public controversy, which has proved to be the case with LTNs, should use objective methods, such as professional polling to British Polling Council standards, to establish a truly representative picture of local views and to ensure that minority views do not dominate the discourse. Polling results should be one part of the suite of robust, empirical evidence on which decisions are made."

With that in mind it is well worth reading the caveats in the Safe Heaton document, under the section section "The Quality and Reliability of the Data" where some of the issues above are raised and then asking again if this data was a good choice for making a decision. If the council put into documentation in August "the data should be regarded as a snap-shot of possible or indicative opinion on the Safe Heaton trials, rather than a robust, systematically sampled data-set", why use it to justify a decision now? And how does that tally with the requirement for a suite of robust empirical evidence?

According to the Council’s own documents traffic fell to 47% previous levels on Heaton Park View (3286 cars before, 1558 average during the LTN), and to 30% Cardigan Terrace (1349 / 590), and despite an average increase of 144 more cars on Wandsworth Road the total average transit for three measuring periods during the LTN was 2831 cars, down from 5803 before, a drop of very nearly 3000 cars a day.

If the aim was to encourage the use of main routes, when the route went live there why was no diversion sign in place at the Heaton Park View/Heaton Road lights instructing drivers to use North View round the LTN; this meant drivers followed their normal routes and therefore learnt to cut onto Wandsworth Road because the crossing to Heaton Park Road/closure wasn’t in place. Once the closure went in the route was already learnt so drivers just continued down the lanes to Cardigan.

Leaving the LTN porous from the outset, and not correcting this when the time was available caused more than half the perceived problems. That this was not met is an implementation error and should have been obvious from the outset.

When the council finally carry out a consultation process where it’s almost certain that it’s mainly those who live in the area affected who contributed it is noticeable that the majority of respondents (72%) were in favour of some sort of scheme in place and there were 70% more people in favour of Option 2 than either Option 1 or no LTN.

The total of 237 responses is also higher than the number of 226 individuals who commented on CommonPlace.

In the council report it is suggested that a turnout of 13% was insufficient to be representative. Residents were given two weeks’ notice of the drop in events as they were held in the very beginning of March having only had notification in February, and despite this managed to get a response rate of 1 in 8. It is also noticeable that the number of people who voted for council leader Nick Kemp (885) as a percentage of the electorate in the Byker ward (6644) is exactly the same 13% as the council are using here to demonstrate ‘insufficient community support for either the current scheme or both alternative options’.

One wonders if Nick Kemp feels that only 13% of the electorate voting for him shows "insufficient community support" in his role on the council?

In order to see if the LTN was meeting it's objectives, we should look at the objectives set out by the council; they were either hit or unmeasured/intangible on the timescales of the ERTO

"For the Heaton area, the key aims for the proposals were to:

1.Reduce through traffic on local residential streets.
2.Encourage vehicular traffic to utilise the identified main routes for vehicles around the area.
3.Maintain vehicle access to all properties and destinations in the area.
4.Introduce measures that reduce / avoid the potential for traffic to divert onto nearby residential streets.
5.Introduce measures to help people on foot to get around the area.
6.Start a process to change behaviour towards the use of active modes of transport.
7.Help alleviate the impact of school traffic in the area."

A drop in traffic by 3,000 cars a day suggests 1 & 2 have been achieved, even with the incomplete scheme; Option 2 would have further reduced this and helped achieve point 4.

From the Council’s own report, section 4.11 (misnumbered as it’s actually 4.12) it is clear that point 3 has been achieved and would also be achieved under Option 2: "vehicle access to all properties and destinations in the area has been maintained."

Regarding point 5 it's clear the closure of Heaton Park View and the new crossing on Heaton Park Road has made the transit to the park significantly easier by foot from either part of Heaton

The LTN wasn't allowed to be in place for time enough to start the long-term behavioural change for 6 and to "start a process to change" is so vague as to be unmeasurable.

The most significant effect on school traffic for point 7 was not measured as there were no monitoring stations along the roads around Hotspur/Chillingham Road schools and school traffic could not be distinguished from commuters or residents.

As stated above – when it was direct consultation with residents of the area affected the majority of respondents (72%) were in favour of some sort of scheme in place and there were 70% more people in favour of Option 2 than either Option 1 or no LTN.

As previously discussed the scheme met the objectives in place when it was set up, but the council is trying to create the impression it has not. While it was not perfect it improved the environment immeasurably compared to how many cars were passing through the Heaton neighbourhood, and while it could have been improved the council failed residents repeatedly.

The failure to sign the changes properly to start with so drivers would use the proper routes.

The failure to initially seal the Heaton Park Road/Wandsworth Road junction.

The failure to expect the porous nature of the LTN to encourage rat running.

The failure of the council to make changes when the LTN was in place, instead allowing it to lapse.

The failure to deal with the issues raised in a timely manner.

The failure to manage the online consultation in such a way that it couldn't be easily gamed by a few users.