The final battle: Pro LTN campaigners SOSS take Tower Hamlets Council to High Court

After years of clashes and controversy, Save our Safer Streets is confident in a win after their High Court case today.

This morning local campaigning group Save Our Safer Streets (SOSS) took the borough of Tower Hamlets to the High Court over Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s decision to scrap the Bethnal Green Low Traffic Neighborhoods (LTNs), which limit car traffic in the borough. 

SOSS claim that the LTNs have reduced air pollution, and made the neighbourhood cleaner and safer to live in. They are still in place as the legal case over their reversal is pending. 

The LTNs were introduced in 2020 under former Mayor John Biggs. When Mayor Lutfur Raham was elected in 2022 he vowed to scrap them, claiming they’d been implemented badly and were a nuisance. 

The LTNs, which cost over £2 million to implement, are estimated by the Council to cost more than £2.5 million to reverse. 

The decision was immediately controversial. An e-petition to keep the scheme in place amassed over 3,000 signatures, the second highest of any e-petition ever made to the Council. 

A 2023 consultation by the Council saw that 59% of residents within the consultation area were in support of keeping the scheme. 

Critics of the LTNs have argued that they make access more difficult for residents and businesses and that pollution and traffic accidents are only pushed to boundary roads and not decreased overall. 

When the Mayor vowed to push ahead with the plan, SOSS began crowdfunding for legal fees and has since raised more than £80k. 

Through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and the compilation of independent research SOSS has shown that the LTNs have reduced serious collisions within the area without incidents increasing on the boundary roads. 

They’ve also shown that Fire Brigade and Ambulance response time has not increased and that air pollution has dropped within the LTN zones without increasing on the boundary roads. 

Jane Harris, a SOSS volunteer and Bethnal Green resident said the scheme has been a huge improvement to the neighborhood. 

‘My husband is a wheelchair user, he used to go with the kids along their school route and I used to wave him off really worried about his safety. [The LTN] just changed everything, I wasn’t worried about them anymore,’ Harris said.

She is confident that SOSS have a strong case in the High Court. ‘We wouldn’t ask people during a cost of living crisis to put their hands in their pockets if we didn’t think we had a good chance of winning.’ 

SOSS is arguing that Rahman’s decision to reverse the LTNs was illegal on seven grounds, including that the decision countered London-wide government planning guidance, botched the consultation process and failed to consider the £2.5 million cost of removing the scheme was a good use of Council funds. 

They are being backed up in court by Transport for London (TfL) as an interested party. TfL said the decision didn’t follow necessary legal processes and conflicted with Tower Hamlet’s Local Implementation Plan which had been agreed with the Mayor of London. 

TfL has previously complained that Tower Hamlets Council misrepresented their position in the 2023 outcome report on reversing the scheme – the report incorrectly claimed that TfL supported the reversal. 

The High Court is expected to deliberate for several weeks before reaching a decision. If SOSS win their case, the LTNs will stay in place for the foreseeable future. 

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