Labour MP says low-traffic neighbourhoods “have left women feeling unsafe”

Last July when a video went viral on social media of a tree falling over in a London suburb, narrowly missing a pedestrian, local MP Rupa Huq seized on the footage to criticise the low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) then beginning to be rolled out in the borough her constituency is located in.

Eight months on, Huq, the Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton is stepping up her campaign against the measures being implemented by Labour-run Ealing Council, designed to stop residential roads being used by motorists as rat runs to avoid congestion on main roads.

In the past 10 days alone, she has spoken on the issue in the House of Commons, appeared on BBC London News, and penned a column for Telegraph.co.uk – and in doing so has deployed a new argument against LTNs, claiming that they make the streets less safe for women.

> “Shameful”: BBC “perpetuated falsehoods” in divisive low traffic neighbourhood report

The prompt for that is the disappearance and murder of Sarah Everard, although from what is known of the police investigation to date, the young woman was abducted while walking home not in an LTN, but along the busy South Circular Road in Clapham.

In a Parliamentary debate on the Police and Crime Bill last Monday, Huq said to Home Secretary Priti Patel: “The tragedy that befell Sarah Everard is a cue for rethinking so much, including readopting and designing out crime principles in our built environment.

“As one small Asian woman to another, may I ask that in all new housing developments, and in the reappraisal of the low-traffic network road changes that are due, consultative consideration of women’s safety and fear of crime is mandated, so that appropriate natural surveillance is built in?

“We must avoid creating nouveaux ghettoes, where perceptions leave women trapped and vulnerable.”

It was a theme she expanded upon in a column published on Sunday on Telegraph.co.uk, taking as her starting point the 33-year-old’s murder and her own question to Patel.

Few would argue against making the streets safer for women.

But it’s striking that, months after raising objection upon objection against LTNs – the most common of which are countered in this piece in the Guardian by Peter Walker – it’s only now that opponents have seized upon the issue. Certainly it wasn’t mentioned at all by the MP in an earlier Telegraph column criticising LTNs, published last November.

As active travel campaigner Sarah Berry points out in this blog post entitled What Rupa Huq is getting wrong on low traffic neighbourhoods, recent research into such interventions in the London Borough of Waltham Forest as part of its Mini Holland project did find that there had been a decreases in overall crime and in particular highlighted significant reductions in violent and sexual crime.

Berry highlights another study published this year which found that investing in infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists had caused a 38 per cent increase in people on foot, and 52 per cent in those on bikes, in the areas analysed.

“The streets within schemes like low traffic neighbourhoods are busier with foot and cycle traffic, creating more eyes on the street and a greater atmosphere of safety,” she wrote.

“So how is it that Huq can claim that these streets will be less safe for women? She does so off the back of an idea that it’s not pedestrians or cyclists that keep streets safe, but passing motor traffic.

“But given the seemingly almost daily stories of drivers not noticing things in their path such as pedestrians, signs, and speed limits — the idea that passing traffic will notice and prevent a crime from taking place is difficult to believe.”

In her Telegraph column last Sunday entitled Low Traffic Neighbourhoods have left women feeling unsafe, Huq recounted how she was stabbed during a mugging when she was in her twenties, adding that “I was able to attract help because of passing traffic.”

That differs, however, from her account in a Manchester Evening News interview in 2013, however, when she said: “I limped to a nearby house and the people there called an ambulance.”

She wrote in the Telegraph that “I have been emailed and stopped in the street by women saying that they now feel scared in the newly quiet ghost streets after dark, and even by men saying that they feel penned in like animals.

“When I recounted them on social media, even reproducing examples, these genuinely held perceptions were dismissed as rubbish,” she added.

Yet when, in late January, one Twitter user posted about the increased presence of cyclists and pedestrians in an Ealing LTN – something one might think Huq would welcome in helping to reduce crime by having more people around – he received a dismissive reply wondering whether the bike riders were displaying lights.

Bully for you!

Hope they all had lights - been pitch black other there for a good couple of hours https://t.co/k73eMI9Keh

— Rupa Huq MP (@RupaHuq) January 27, 2021

We first reported on Huq’s opposition to LTNs in July last year, when referencing a video of a tree falling in her constituency, she said that the incident “makes this proposed madcap scheme that will gridlock the hood and cause mayhem for emergency vehicles even more ludicrous.”

Scary incident in South Ealing. Luckily everyone unscathed.

Makes this proposed madcap scheme that will gridlock the hood and cause mayhem for emergency vehicles even more ludicrous. Please object https://t.co/5SjhNV4Xns https://t.co/KwO6Er7Knj

— Rupa Huq MP (@RupaHuq) July 5, 2020

> Labour MP uses falling tree clip to argue against Low Traffic Neighbourhood plans

The perceived blocking of access to the emergency services has been a common objection raised to the implementation of LTNs – although ambulance services across the UK, including in London, have said that they do not affect response times

Within Ealing itself, the local council responded to such concerns by removing bollards from LTNs and deploying ANPR CCTV cameras instead – which has led Huq, and other opponents, to claim that they are being used as a means of raising revenue from motorists.

Interesting figures show £466,440 of fines netted in just the few weeks to 17/1 with no physical barriers to prevent driving thru Ealing’s multiple LTNs replaced by numberplate recognition and (often poor) signage

Ker-ching!

Three new ones on way - 3 wks consultation underway https://t.co/vmiLbHTXQO

— Rupa Huq MP (@RupaHuq) March 7, 2021

That tweet received a number of negative comments in the replies, including this Twitter user highlighting that when the bollards were in place, many stolen, and others querying why a sitting MP was apparently condoning law-breaking behaviour.

In just the first 2 weeks of LTN21, 77 bollards were stolen - a cost of around £15,000.

That’s another reason these cameras are a good idea - because certain people can’t behave themselves. 🤔

— Mark Eccleston (@MarkEccleston1) March 8, 2021

As we reported yesterday, according to a survey published earlier this month, LTNs do enjoy strong levels of support across Greater London as a whole – there are three times as many people who support them as those who are opposed, with a similar ratio found among those who live within such an area.

> Backers of London LTNs outnumber opponents by three to one

One other finding from that survey is worth noting, given that Huq is a Labour MP with a constituency in a Labour-controlled borough – Londoners who voted for the party in the 2019 General Election are, at 53 per cent, more likely than Conservative voters to be in favour of LTNs.