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Pressure mounts on Kensington & Chelsea to explain cycleway “opposition”TfL Holland Park Avenue.JPG

Pressure mounts on Kensington & Chelsea to explain cycleway “opposition”

Council unable to say how many of the 1,000 people who wrote to it opposed or supported Holland Park scheme
by Simon_MacMichael
Mon, Jul 01, 2019 15:50
7

Pressure is mounting on the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea (RBKC) to explain how many people who wrote to it regarding a proposed cycleway along Holland Park Avenue and Notting Hill Gate were actually opposed to the scheme – and how many were in fact supporters of the proposals.

Last month, days before a consultation from Transport for London (TfL) was due to conclude on the scheme, RBKC – which had previously adopted a neutral stance, pending public responses – said at a public meeting that it would not be backing the proposals.

That means that the planned route from Wood Lane to Notting Hill will now stop at Shepherd’s Bush roundabout, with the westward portion on roads controlled by TfL rather than RBKC.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said that by announcing its decision before the consultation closed, RBKC had “made a total mockery” of the process, and The Guardian reports London Cycling Campaign (LCC) as saying that the borough’s inability to back up what it called overwhelming opposition to the proposals with hard facts was “beyond flimsy.”

The Conservative-controlled council’s leader, Elizabeth Campbell, said it had received 1,000 letters or emails about the scheme. But when The Guardian asked the council how many of the 1,000 people who had sent it emails and letters were actually supporters of the scheme, RBKC was unable to provide a response.

Nor was it able to clarify whether everyone who contacted it was automatically deemed to be in opposition to the proposals.

However, going by this tweet from a supporter of the scheme outlining the response she received from the council,  there does appear to have been an assumption on RBKC’s part that only opponents would write in.

TfL itself has received more than 5,000 responses to the consultation, and similar exercises in the past on other routes, even where there has been vociferous local opposition, suggests that the vast majority would be supportive of the scheme in whole or in part.

Simon Munk, infrastructure campaigner at LCC, told The Guardian: “The idea ‘the vast majority’ of residents oppose this scheme is beyond flimsy.”

He added that it seemed as though a “noisy, but relatively small minority have been allowed to derail a vital and valuable scheme and encouraged the borough to undermine a formal consultation process.”

However, a spokesman for RBKC said: “We are 100 per cent certain that our position reflects the views of local residents. We will, of course, consider the wider picture when TfL present the results later in the year.”

Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, also tweeted today about the council’s stance on the cycleway, calling it “a wretched decision.”

Kensington & Chelsea
Holland Park
Simon MacMichael

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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7 comments

Avatar
alansmurphy | 4 years ago
2 likes

True legs but you can probably change Tory to MPs, Councillors or any other tw ts in their ivory towers!

Avatar
Legs_Eleven_Wor... | 4 years ago
4 likes

Erm, why is anyone surprised, shocked or even outraged by this?  They're Tories.  They're c***s.  They're utter vermin.  Irredeemable, subhuman filth.  They don't give a flying shit about 'sustainable transport', or about pollution or about road deaths.  They care only for their own selfish, greedy, grasping little lives and the 'right' to drive a supercharged Bentley around the streets of London, and to hell with everyone and everything else on the planet.  Rather than trying to work out their motives, why not just pray that every one of the snivelling little shits has a fatal aneurysm and rids the planet of their obnoxious presence?

Avatar
burtthebike | 4 years ago
5 likes

Same as my local council, who wanted to remove a chicane, to which I objected, but they went ahead and did it anyway.  When I asked how many people had opposed the removal, they said nobody had.

Avatar
brooksby replied to burtthebike | 4 years ago
4 likes
burtthebike wrote:

Same as my local council, who wanted to remove a chicane, to which I objected, but they went ahead and did it anyway.  When I asked how many people had opposed the removal, they said nobody had.

They misspoke. Clearly they meant to say, "Nobody whose opinion we actually give a {...} about objected."

Avatar
Jetmans Dad | 4 years ago
4 likes

Here is what I don't get about the way the council have dealt with it ... given that they made their decision before the consultation was completed and (assuming this is accurate for the sake of argument) on the strength of 450 emails in opposition to the new lanes. 

Do they not understand that those choosing to take the time and effort to email the council their opinions are (a) self selecting and (b) more likely to be in opposition to whatever the proposal is than in agreement. Same reason that radio phone ins are crammed full of the extremes of viewpoints on the issue at hand ... it is those with the strongest opinions who are energised and motivated enough to make contact. 

Dismissing this on the strength of those energised enough to email their opposition is ridiculous. The whole point of a consultation is to try and get not only that self-selecting, strongly motivated portion of the population to give their opinions, but also those less strident on the issue and those sitting on the fence ... including those who don't really care, but are happy to see it built if the experts think it will make a positive difference. 

That said, the article in The Guardian does make it appear as though they simply assumed that everyone contacting them was opposing the move. Maybe a bit of confirmation bias creeping in there as well.

Avatar
brooksby replied to Jetmans Dad | 4 years ago
2 likes
Jetmans Dad wrote:

Dismissing this on the strength of those energised enough to email their opposition is ridiculous. The whole point of a consultation is to try and get not only that self-selecting, strongly motivated portion of the population to give their opinions, but also those less strident on the issue and those sitting on the fence ... including those who don't really care, but are happy to see it built if the experts think it will make a positive difference. 

Anecdote alert:

 

 

A local planning application went in near me.  It would directly affect a market at which my partner runs a stall.  She wouldn't comment, so I did.  Opposed it on the grounds that the application - to vastly expand the cafe and bar adjacent to the market site - would make that area of the city even more monoculture (cafe/bars, nothing else) and so wasn't needed.  Unfortunately, my real surname is quite distinctive, and the people who made the application, who are the landlords of the market, said was this anything to do with my wife and asked the (the market people) to ask her to ask me to withdraw the objection.  So much for open consultation, eh?

Avatar
OldRidgeback replied to brooksby | 4 years ago
0 likes
brooksby wrote:
Jetmans Dad wrote:

Dismissing this on the strength of those energised enough to email their opposition is ridiculous. The whole point of a consultation is to try and get not only that self-selecting, strongly motivated portion of the population to give their opinions, but also those less strident on the issue and those sitting on the fence ... including those who don't really care, but are happy to see it built if the experts think it will make a positive difference. 

Anecdote alert:

 

 

A local planning application went in near me.  It would directly affect a market at which my partner runs a stall.  She wouldn't comment, so I did.  Opposed it on the grounds that the application - to vastly expand the cafe and bar adjacent to the market site - would make that area of the city even more monoculture (cafe/bars, nothing else) and so wasn't needed.  Unfortunately, my real surname is quite distinctive, and the people who made the application, who are the landlords of the market, said was this anything to do with my wife and asked the (the market people) to ask her to ask me to withdraw the objection.  So much for open consultation, eh?

That is appalling.

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