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The time has come for us to head to the High Court for our judicial review hearing! On 20 and 21 November, a judge will hear why we think Lutfur Rahman’s decision last September to rip out our safer streets was illegal.

Our lawyers from Leigh Day will be arguing on seven grounds, including that the mayor ignored government guidance on low traffic neighbourhoods, ran a flawed consultation and decision-making process, and failed to properly consider if removing the LTN’s safer street layouts was a good use of £2.5 million.

Representatives from Transport for London, an ‘interested party’, will be in court with us and have submitted evidence in advance. They are arguing that Tower Hamlets’ decision didn't follow the necessary legal processes and is at odds with the council’s Local Implementation Plan which had previously been agreed with the Mayor of London.

If the judge decides that any of our seven grounds are proven, then the mayor’s decision is likely to be cancelled. We hope this will lead Tower Hamlets Council to rethink their plans and focus on real local priorities.

We are so grateful to the thousands of you who have supported us so far and who donated to our crowdfunder to get us into the courtroom. We hope to come out with a result that helps protect our cleaner air, safer routes and friendlier neighbourhoods for our community and beyond.

Ricardo Gama, senior associate solicitor at Leigh Day, said:

"Lutfur Rahman committed in his election manifesto to following a legal consultation process before deciding whether to remove the safer street layouts in Tower Hamlets. The High Court will hear why the procedure which he and the council followed appears to have been anything but that. Our client argues that by failing to comply with the legal safeguards for local government decision-making, Mr Rahman and the council have ridden roughshod over the plurality of voices who live and work in Tower Hamlets, in particular the majority of households in the borough who don’t own a car."

You can keep up with our news by signing up to our newsletter or following us on X, on Instagram or on Facebook. The whole of Tower Hamlets deserves safer streets and we will soon be having conversations with communities across the borough. If you want to continue to help us grow our campaign, you can make a donation or become a regular supporter via our fundraising page.

On Thursday 7th November, we submitted our petition to protect Tower Hamlets' safer streets to the London Assembly. You can watch Assembly member Caroline Russell present it here.

We were thrilled that by the time the petition was presented it had over 3,500 signatures - testament to how many people care about safer streets in the capital. We now await a response from Sadiq Khan and will of course update you when we have news on this. We know he’s on our side on this issue, but it’s really important that he matches this support with action and does everything he can to prevent Tower Hamlets from taking this harmful action.

Such strong support is really helpful in keeping this issue on Sadiq’s radar at a time when some key decisions are going to be made about transport in Tower Hamlets.

The most immediate decision is our judicial review. The hearing is scheduled for November 20-21, where the High Court will decide if Tower Hamlets Council's decision to remove these schemes was lawful. While the case has been brought by a local resident and supported by SOSS, TFL are appearing as an interested party. This illustrates how important this decision is to London-wide transport and why the ask of our petition is such an important element in the campaign.

Thank you to everyone who signed and shared the petition. We are so grateful for your support. Check back for updates or sign up to our newsletter to stay in the loop.

We are launching a petition asking Mayor Sadiq Khan to stand up for Londoners and residents of Tower Hamlets by stepping in to prevent the removal of the LTNs in Tower Hamlets. If necessary, we are asking him to use his legal powers to do this.

We believe Sadiq Khan could and should be doing more to stand up for the many Londoners who want to keep our safer street schemes. Tower Hamlets Council’s plans go against all his transport policies at a time when he risks not hitting his own targets. Evidence also shows that the majority of Londoners support LTNs and other measures that make streets friendlier and safer for people who walk, cycle and use public transport. And we know that Sadiq has legal powers as Mayor of London that would allow him to intervene where a council does something that goes against the transport plans for London.

Petitions to the Mayor of London need to be presented by an Assembly member. The great news is that Caroline Russell, a Green London Assembly member, has agreed to present a petition for us.

We only have one month to gather as many signatures as possible to show Sadiq that people care about this and want him to do more. Please sign the petition today and share with as many people as you can -- friends, neighbours, WhatsApp groups, socials. This is an issue that goes beyond Tower Hamlets so people can sign in support wherever they live in the UK..

We’ll also be doing some campaigning on the ground. If you’d like to put an A3 poster up in your window, get in touch and we’ll get one to you.

Some of you have asked if there is a way to support the campaign financially, and now there is a way for you to do this!

With the exception of the CrowdJustice appeal, we’ve taken an ad hoc approach to funding our activities to date. Steering Group members have often covered the cost of print runs etc., or occasionally we’ve had a whip-round on WhatsApp. This has meant we have been limited in our scope and funding bigger one-off costs has been tricky.

We’ve exciting plans for the year ahead and to make sure we can maximise the impact of our actions, we’ve set up a new way for you to donate to the campaign – either by making a one-off donation or by becoming a regular supporter.We've always been a community-driven campaign and our approach to fundraising will be accountable, open and democratic.

We’re working with Social Change Nest who support grassroots groups like ours. They make sure all the money is properly handled and accounted for, and their platform allows donors to choose which activities to support and keep track of what the campaign is spending money on. We think it’s great and you can check out our new campaign page (and make a donation) here.

All the money you give will be used to fight to save our safer streets and to build the campaign. It will help ensure we get lasting and permanent change in Tower Hamlets. And as well as giving to us, if you have ideas for campaigning activity we could be doing, you are welcome to let us know and get involved in how we spend the money.

We are very excited to announce that we are hiring a community organiser! The deadline for applications is October 30th.

The community organiser will build a large coalition of people and groups within Tower Hamlets who support proposals to make streets in the borough safer for everyone, particularly for those who walk, wheel, cycle and use public transport.

Read the full job advert here and contact us with any questions or to submit your application. We are looking forward to hearing from you!

Don't meet every single requirement? Research shows that women and people of color are less likely than others to apply if they feel like they don't fully match the job requirements. Don't let the confidence gap stand in your way! We know that experience comes in many different forms and there are different ways to approach the same job. So get in touch, we are looking forward to reading your application!

Update 26 June 2024: The court date has been moved to 20 and 21 November 2024.

Today we have two pieces of exciting news to share. Firstly, the courts have told us that our hearing for judicial review will take place at the Royal Courts of Justice on 12 and 13 June 2024. Also, as of today we have hit our fundraising target of £75,000, based on donations from 1,126 different people!

This is how the funds will be spent:

• Our legal team should now have all the funds they need to prepare for the hearing, attend the two-day hearing itself on 12 and 13 June 2024, and deal with its consequences. There is also an allowance for meeting some of Tower Hamlets’ costs if we lose.
• If our legal team ends up with any unspent money once all their work on the hearing and its immediate consequences is complete, then two examples of possible uses for leftover money from this stage would be:
• If we win: to seek legal advice on the implications of the judgment on the council’s future decision-making and any potential appeal from the council.
• If we lose: to go towards advice on a potential appeal.

The timeline up to the hearing on June 12 and 13 is as follows:

• By 22 March, Tower Hamlets Council and Transport for London (who joined the case as an Interested Party) should send the court their detailed legal submissions plus any evidence they want to rely on.
• By 12 April, we have to submit any submissions and evidence we need in reply.
• By 14 May, we need to agree all the contents of the hearing bundle with Tower Hamlets and file it with the court.
• By 21 May, we need to serve our “skeleton argument” for the case. This is the document which summarises the issues, arguments and legal precedents which we plan to use at the hearing.
• By 28 May, Tower Hamlets need to serve their skeleton argument for the case.
• By the day before the hearing, we should know which judge has been allocated the case
• 12 and 13 June - hearing at Royal Courts of Justice
• Date unknown - judgment published

Sign up to our newsletter to receive updates on how the legal case is progressing, or follow us on X, Instagram, TikTok or Facebook.

We will have a two-day hearing at the High Court.

A judge has decided that all of our seven reasons for challenging Tower Hamlets Mayor’s decision can be argued in court. Having read all the paperwork from us and Tower Hamlets Council, a judge agreed with our legal team that all of our grounds of challenge are arguable, and disagreed with the council’s arguments that the whole case should be dismissed without a hearing. This is a big step forward.

Here's what happens next:

• Tower Hamlets Council and Transport for London (who joined the case as an Interested Party) now have a month to send the court their detailed evidence.
• We will then have a few weeks to submit our own detailed evidence in reply.
• In the coming weeks, we should also find out the date for the hearing, which we expect to be in the first half of 2024.

Here is what this means in detail:

• We will get a chance to argue in court that the decision made in September 2023 to remove the LTNs in Bethnal Green was unlawful. Judges turn down the vast majority of claims for judicial review at this “paper submission” stage, or at least they reject many of the grounds of challenge. The facts of our case and the way our excellent legal team have presented them, mean we have cleared the hurdle at the first attempt and been granted a full hearing directly, rather than needing a preliminary hearing.
• Our overall funding target is now £75,000 (not the original £80,000). Our legal team had advised us to assume a £10,000 cap to cover the legal costs of Tower Hamlets council in case we lose. But because the Council didn’t ask to amend the cap, the “Aarhus Convention” is going to apply with a £5,000 limit.
• TfL will also be getting involved. TfL has brought in Charlotte Kilroy KC to represent their position as an “interested party” at the hearing. Again, this is a signal that our challenge matters beyond just our local area. TfL doesn’t spend money on lawyers to intervene in dodgy or very local legal cases.
• At some point in 2024 (or 2025) there will be a High Court judgment on whether Lutfur Rahman, Mayor of Tower Hamlets, broke the law. If the judge decides that any of the seven grounds are proven, then their decision is likely to be cancelled. We hope this will lead to a fundamental rethink by the Council, rather than them just deciding again to remove the low traffic neighbourhoods in the borough.

Ultimately, our vision is to save our safer streets, by keeping and improving the good infrastructure that we have. The legal challenge is one very important piece of the puzzle but we have plans for a whole lot more. Watch this space for more information soon, sign up to our newsletter to receive updates or follow us on social media. Thank you to everyone who has got us this far and here’s to a successful 2024, leading to a better neighbourhood for everyone!

Today at Save our Safer Streets, we have applied to the High Court to ask a judge to review whether Mayor Lutfur Rahman broke the law when he decided in September to remove our safer streets.

We believe the Tower Hamlets Mayor has failed to follow the law in several ways, including ignoring government guidance on low traffic neighbourhoods, running a flawed consultation and decision-making process, and failing to properly consider if removing the safer streets design is a good use of £2.5 million.

Our group of residents has been campaigning since summer 2022 to keep the schemes in place. Jane Harris from the group said:

"This legal challenge is an absolute last resort for us. We have tried for a year and a half to meet the mayor and look at the specific issues and solutions for Bethnal Green, but he hasn’t even bothered to visit the scheme, let alone meet us."

"Not only has he ignored all the evidence, expert views and residents’ preferences about keeping the schemes, but he has now made a decision which we believe has broken the law.""

Harris notes that the outcome of the case will have an impact far beyond Tower Hamlets. Transport for London, which has previously recommended that the schemes stay in place, has already become involved in the legal case as an ‘interested party’ – something it has declined to do in other similar cases, such as the recent judicial review into the removal of a cycle lane on High Street Kensington.

"No council has ever removed a permanent low traffic neighbourhood that has the support of a majority of residents," continues Harris. "If this decision were to be deemed legal, it would set a terrible precedent. It would be a huge blow for healthy, safe travel across the country."

The SOSS campaign – along with local schools, the Royal London Hospital and the police – has emphasised the benefits of the Tower Hamlets safer streets schemes, underscored by the results of three resident consultations which all came out in support of keeping the cycle lanes, seating areas for residents and wider pavements.

“Our community benefits so much from the cleaner air and quieter residential streets,” says Harris. “In the course of this campaign I’ve heard so many stories from families, disabled people, delivery cyclists, businesses and neighbours who all love feeling safer and breathing easier. The changes have made our neighbourhood so much friendlier. Going back to heavy traffic would be really destructive.”

The campaigners have instructed Leigh Day Solicitors to act on their behalf. Senior associate solicitor Ricardo Gama said:

"Save Our Safer Streets feel they have no option but to bring a claim for judicial review because the mayor has chosen the most destructive option of completely removing the low traffic neighbourhoods when less harmful alternatives were available, and the evidence showed that the schemes were working."

"A judge will now decide whether the grounds of challenge are arguable and if so, a full hearing will be held in 2024. In the meantime, we have asked the council to confirm that they won’t carry out any works to remove the schemes until the court has decided whether the mayor acted legally."

Harris and her fellow campaigners are now crowdfunding to finance the legal challenge. “It’s a desperate measure, but we feel so strongly about this and the support we’ve had so far shows that many of our neighbours feel the same,” she says. “It’s heartening to see how much people want us to succeed.”

Donate to help us fight this decision in court now: visit our crowdjustice page.

BBC London News covers Tower Hamlets Mayor's decision to remove the safer streets in Bethnal Green.

Vanessa Feltz talks to SOSS campaigner Jane Harris on Talk TV

ITV1 LONDON coverage of Bethnal Green's safer streets including interviews with SOSS campaigner Jane Harris and Oaklands Secondary School headteacher Simon Ramsay. Broadcast on 20 September 2023.

Tower Hamlets residents, including campaigners, GPs and schools, have expressed their dismay at a decision by the council to remove almost the entirety of ‘Liveable Streets’ schemes in the borough.

Two public consultations have shown strong local support for keeping the streets in Bethnal Green and Brick lane as they are. The results of the most recent consultation from February 2023, published last week, showed that 58% of local residents preferred the status quo, and over 75% of all respondents favoured keeping the current schemes.

Residents were offered two options in the consultation - Option 1 to reverse the low traffic neighbourhoods or Option 2 to keep them.

The street layouts were installed just two years ago at a cost of over £2 million. Today’s decision will cost the council at least a further £2.5m and is not currently budgeted for. Bart’s Hospital, the Metropolitan Police, Transport for London, local schools, local GPs and 82% of businesses have all supported ‘Option 2’ or keeping the schemes as they are, given the improvements to health and safety and reductions in anti-social behaviour.

Jane Harris, a campaigner with Save Our Safer Streets, who last year presented a petition signed by 3094 residents calling on the council to keep the layouts; requested to speak at this evening’s Cabinet meeting but was rejected. She said:

“We are utterly dismayed by the Mayor’s reckless and dangerous decision today. He has shown absolute contempt for the health of children and older people in the borough. Every time they’ve asked local residents what we want, we’ve said the same thing: keep and improve the new layouts.

“And now the council has decided to ignore what the majority of residents want and get rid of nearly all the improvements. This is totally undemocratic and unacceptable. It will take us back to the bad old days of unsafe roads, polluted air and really problematic anti-social behaviour in areas like Arnold Circus and Middleton Green. And he’s offering us nothing at all to mitigate any of these issues.

“We’re also very concerned about the report they based the decision on. We noticed it leaves out a huge amount of the evidence we’ve seen in favour of the schemes, including objections from the Met Police and Transport for London, and it misrepresents the views of local businesses.

Dr Emma Radcliffe, a GP and Vice Chair of the Tower Hamlets Local Medical Council, is one of 65 health professionals who have written to the mayor urging him to preserve the schemes and their associated health benefits. She said:

“Keeping the schemes is absolutely the best thing for public health in the borough. The council’s data shows that air quality is improving everywhere in Tower Hamlets, but pollution is still a big threat to our health. We also know that active travel is associated with better physical and mental health, as well as lower environmental impact.

“In a borough with the fifth worst air quality in London as well as higher rates of childhood obesity and early death from stroke and heart disease, we need to do everything possible to reduce dependency on cars and get people walking and cycling. That’s why my colleagues and I called on the mayor to retain the schemes.”

Simon Ramsay is the head of Oaklands School on Old Bethnal Green Road, in the middle of one of the low traffic neighbourhoods. He said:

“I’m absolutely appalled by this decision. The current street layouts have made our 1,000 students so much safer as they come and go and travel between our buildings: now they’ll be at risk again. The thought of thousands of extra cars, vans and HGVs chugging past our school, spewing pollution and endangering our young people, is truly awful.

“The huge disruption and noise required to reverse the schemes, not to mention the incredible waste of public money here is truly galling. The mayor recently paused a desperately needed investment programme for our school, and we will have to watch as he ploughs money into ripping up the infrastructure around our school that made it a better place to work and study.

“We see first-hand the impact of the housing and cost-of-living crises on our community, and we’re about to see rubbish piling up due to strikes. But the Mayor wants to spend at least £2.5m pulling out a scheme that only recently cost millions of taxpayers' pounds to put in.”

Rob Andari from Save Our Safer Streets said:

“All along we’ve asked the mayor to listen to everyone who is affected by our street design. We want the council to understand any specific problems with the scheme and spend money on fixing them, not wasting over £2.5 m ripping out the whole design.

“This is not the end. We know we have public support for our cause and the overwhelming evidence too. With the advice of our lawyers, we will monitor the legality of what the council has done. Our Crowd Justice page is open for donations so we are in a position to act as necessary to protect our safer streets.”

Click here to donate to our legal Crowdfunder.

TOWER HAMLETS: Papers published ahead of a decision next week (20 Sept) on the future of the Liveable Streets scheme have revealed that 58% of local residents want to keep the new road layouts in place.

The latest council report also shows that air quality has improved both within the scheme and on boundary roads.

The cabinet papers make public the results of a consultation carried out in February - the second in less than a year. Both consultations have found that residents support the status quo. The more detailed 2019 consultation that inspired the scheme also reported strong resident support for the Liveable Streets schemes. However, the 2021 Aspire manifesto committed to reversing them.

Mayor Lutfur Rahman and his Cabinet will decide on the future of the schemes next Wednesday. Alongside the two options offered to residents in the consultation - Option 1 to reverse the schemes or Option 2 to keep them - the papers also include a new option which has been developed by the council behind closed doors.

Under option 3, over 80% of the scheme removals proposed by option 1 would still be carried out, at an estimated cost of £1.2m which is not currently in the council budget. Bart’s Hospital, the Metropolitan Police, Transport for London, local schools and 90% of businesses have all supported ‘option 2’ or keeping the schemes as they are, given the improvements to health, safety and anti-social behaviour.

If the council decided to remove the schemes, it would be the first in the country to do so against the will of residents.

Rob Andari from local campaign group Save Our Safer Streets said: “Residents have repeatedly rejected option 1. It’s pretty safe to assume they wouldn’t welcome a decision that delivers 81% of the outcome they didn’t want, under this new, unconsulted third option 3.

“Lutfur Rahman promised to be a ‘listening Mayor’ - here is his chance to come good on that promise. At least 58% of residents have said they want to keep the current street designs and save the council more than a million pounds.

“We would love the council to spend that money on things Tower Hamlets residents really need like better housing, more funding for schools and more help during the cost of living crisis. It would be an insult to residents to ignore what they’ve said a third time and to spend their money making the air dirtier and making cycling and walking more dangerous at a time when people need cheap forms of transport more than ever.

“Last year, more than 3,000 local people signed a petition calling on the council to stop, listen and improve its plans. They haven’t stopped, they aren’t listening and they have proposed no improvements to what we already have today.”

We're thrilled to have our very own newsletter, the September Issue. Download it as a PDF, here (1mb).

More news coverage of Tower Hamlets council's plans to remove the new road layouts and of the campaign to save our safer streets, this time from MyLondon.

Shaheena Parvin voices her support for Save Our Safer Streets in the East London Advertiser's Community View section.

UPDATE - PROGRAMME POSTPONED

This programme has been postponed till August (see this Twitter post).

We have an ace opportunity this Thursday to get Luftur Rahman to realise how many people care about safer streets. He's appearing on BBC Radio London this Thursday and Eddie Nestor the presenter is taking questions from the public.

Please send your question to eddie@bbc.co.uk.

The more emails we send the more likely Luftur Rahman will have to respond to this issue.