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news
Keyhole Bridge before and after, Poole (via Cycling UK).PNGCycling UK threatens council with legal action over "unlawful" decision to keep rat-run open
Cycling UK has threatened a council with legal action if it will not reconsider its controversial decision to keep a known rat-run open to motor vehicles.
The Keyhole Bridge in Poole Park was closed to drivers under an experimental traffic restriction order (ETRO) in 2020 to improve active travel access during the pandemic. However, in December, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council ignored a public consultation showing the majority of residents supported the permanent closure, deciding to keep the underpass open to motor traffic.
Cycling UK has written a letter before action to the council, saying that the decision of 14 December was "unlawful" and failed to take into account statutory guidance issued to highway authorities under the Network Management Act 2004.
The charity says residents were "dismayed" by its reopening to motor traffic, with one local, Paul Bradley saying "children were able to cycle and travel safely" and he "can't understand" the decision "when all the evidence points to the benefits and popular opinion is in favour".
"Children were able to cycle and travel safely while KHB was closed," he said. "I felt safer too and without rat-running traffic the streets I call home became a better place to live with a growing sense of community.
"I can't understand when all the evidence points to the benefits and popular opinion is in favour [of closing KHB to motor traffic] why the council is stubbornly refusing to budge, ignoring the evidence, public opinion and government guidance."
BCP Council opted to reopen the route to motor vehicles in March 2021 due to its assessment that the closure would cause delays of around three minutes at peak times which, it turn, would result in an economic cost of £220,000 per year.
However, a report commissioned by the Keyhole Bridge Group and authored by independent body KMC Transport Planning concluded the decision to reopen was based on flawed analysis.
The analysis by KMC suggested that the closure could result in a positive financial impact of £8.5 million over a 20-year period.
Duncan Dollimore, head of campaigns at Cycling UK, added: "It shouldn't be down to local groups or charities with limited resources to police council decision-making to ensure due process is followed, mounting legal challenges that rely on donations when councils act unlawfully.
"However, this is where we find ourselves with authorities like BCP Council persistently ignoring not just public opinion and expert analysis but also statutory guidance.
"As it stands this decision has no rational evidence base, which is why Cycling UK is asking the council to reconsider, on a lawful basis, their decision to keep Whitecliff Road open to motor traffic."
Commenting on the decision to reopen the route to traffic, Mike Greene, a portfolio holder for transport said the cabinet had "considered the views of all those who use this route for travel to work, school, or leisure, as well as the views of local ward councillors and all other evidence including the assessment reports appended to the cabinet report."
"On balance, cabinet considered that the benefits of retaining the access as it is outweighed the benefits of closing it to vehicular traffic," he said.
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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39 comments
When the Mini-Holland scheme in Walthamstow was opened, I always thought it was strange that you could drive north through the scheme in the morning, and then south through the scheme in the afternoon and evening. The council offices are north of Mini-Holland. Through work I had a casual coffee with a member of the management team, and guess what they told me regarding certain councillors commuting habits?
Cycling UK should go do one.
Agree
I think they are going to court and attempting to "do" the council into at least making some more effort to justify that they didn't actually breach their responsibilities in how they made their decision. That's pretty small beer (as opposed to making them actually implement e.g. an active travel network). Still, I'm all for that, better to light a candle etc.
Was that what you mean?
We have a very similar situation in Harrogate where the council took out a modal filter scheme on Beech Grove without publishing any evidence at all.
6 months on they have finally published the consultation results which show that 66% supported the scheme - but N Yorkshire refuses to reinstate it.
Have you tried the Ombudsman?
Or you could even try becoming the Ombudsman - the job has just been advertised - https://www.lgo.org.uk/vacancies/local-government-and-social-care-ombuds...
I am considering the Ombudsman.
I put in a complaint some time ago and I'm now going to ask the council for a final decision (even though I know what it is).
'Ignored a public consultation'
I thought a consulation wasnt a vote? or at least thats what many cycle campaigners say when local consultation results want LTN reopened or cycle lane removed
.
(I support closing this route to cars, i just think double standards are funny)
I agree. I'm interested to know what the basis of the legal action is. Do local authorities have a legal obligation to do things that are demonstrably in the best interests of their constituents? I have no idea, but if they do, I'm surprised there isn't a lot more legal action flying around. Maybe there is and we just don't hear about it.
Broadly speaking, public bodies are obliged to follow fair decision-making processes. Judicial review is a means of challenging the decision-making, rather than the decision per se, e.g. did they give due weight to relevant facts, or undue weight to irrelevant ones. As Ian says below, the local authority is then free to come to the same decision again by a fair process.
Thank you for sharing
Yes. And the time passed and the publicity often mean the bandwagon has moved on by the time a judgment is handed down.
BCP council aren't exactly on a winning streak at the High Court: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/03/high-court-overrules-bou...
see also: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-54377108
I guess CUK see the Keyhole Bridge as a test case. To give it its due, the Council are building a fair few cycle lanes - much drivist huffing and puffing but that's another story. So too are all the disruptions due to leaking gas mains.
The Bournemouth Echo account of this latest challenge had got to over 100 comments last time I looked and then when I came back in again after work, they had shut down comments and everything disappears.
The troll drivists on there are pretty rabid. I had to bow out (and do some work) just as we were getting to "1600 people killed each year - that's a pretty decent number, all things considered."
The key word is reasonable. I'm not sure if it was from common law or enshrined later, but public bodies have a duty to act reasonably.
The oddity is that legally they are deemed to be acting on our behalf (which gets very bizarre at planning inquiries when the public are annoyed at the council), yet these days that has been subverted so generally they are bound by central government dictat which has become more restrictive.
A consultation (including things like planning applications) should not be a vote, though they should give some weight to significant representations. The idea is they are information gathering exercises, recognising that local people and interested parties may have useful views. Ideally, the council should list the points raised in the consultation, validate them and examine each on their merits.
In this case, they are apparently acting unreasonably because there are limited benefits to their decision, there is demonstrable harm and cost, there was a weight of public opinion sampled that suggested it was not demanded to be opened and they don't seem to have been able to claim a clear rationale for overriding the harm.
Cough-cough - "advisory referendum" - cough cough
The action would be on the basis of failing to follow the guidance in the Network Management Duty to support active travel.
It says that ETRO schemes should be retained unless there is substantial evidence to the contrary. Lack of public support could be such evidence, but where there is public support that would not apply.
The frustrating thing is all a judicial review can do is point out where they went wrong and ask them to retake the decision. Entrenched councils will simply then spend time and effort coming up with a review-proof documented decision to do the same thing again. It's an expensive process where you need to be realistic about what can be achieved. It is interesting that a small number of vociferous motorists can persuade councillors to make poor decisions that risk high legal costs for the council, yet some councils can be immune to cyclist pressure.
Would the Local Government Ombudsman be a cheaper way to perhaps achieve the same thing?
I suspect that in principle, yes, but the LGO can only make recommendations, the courts have the force of law (though I think the only sanction is being in contempt, which has the joy of judges having a free hand in determining punishment, sadly usually a big telling off I should think). There are also timing issues, and it may be that going through the LGO runs out the clock on taking to court. Councils are very good at extending complaint times - sorry can't deal with your level 2 complaint, nobody available - my response, let's make it level 3 then as you've run out of time. We can't do a level 3 as we haven't got a level 2 to adjudicate on, etc.
"the views of local ward councillors and all other evidence"
BCP Council can't tell the difference between Opinions and Evidence, so not surprised they made the wrong choice.
Deserves to be challenged.
So most people wanted it closed to motor vehicles, independent analysis shows that it would be an economic benefit to keep it closed, and yet the council opens it; democracy in action. As I've said before, it would not be entirely surprising to find that some councillors who drive use the bridge as a rat run. If I lived there my local councillor would be getting hell.
I'm a CyclingUK member, and I support this action! 😁 Good luck CyclingUK legal team!
And this is why I switched from BC to CUK. Whilst they cant fight every battle they take a good swing at some, and at least they don't look for sponsorship in all the wrong places.
They're in touch - BC are out of touch.
Same here, happy to pay my subs.
Got my 25 year pin a little while back.
Classic CTC styling.
...and me. Good effort CyclingUK, keep up the top work.
Me too.
Me too.
weirdly its stuff like this which is why I wouldnt, as I wouldnt want my subs to fund what I think is a wasted action.
BC might annoy me with their sponsorship deals, and offering new members a bunch of free see.sense lights, whilst existing members renewing get nothing.
But at least they promote cycling in my area alot more than CUK have done.
one of the things I keep highlighting is holding councils to account with what they have done with their active travel funds, and how many of the experimental schemes have been reversed, because I bet the picture is alot worse across the UK, than just one road on the south coast.
The pick and choose their battles but this is the 3 or 4 th one they've threatened legal action over. The aim isn't to fight them all but to make councils behave properly when doing this stuff and to create legal precedents. Seem smart to me.
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