Decision time for the West Greenwich Scheme: make your voice heard

Time will be up on 3 March for making Formal Objections to the West Greenwich Traffic Scheme. The Scheme was introduced under a new temporary traffic order, so that Greenwich qualified for the first tranche of the Emergency Active Travel Fund. The government chose to introduce this new form of temporary order because of the temporary nature of the pandemic.

But Greenwich rapidly changed the legal authority for the scheme to an Emergency Traffic Order (or ETO, normally used to cement permanent changes).  The ETO came into force on 3 September. We have very little time to register the Objections.  To make a Formal Objection, see our sample on our Take Action page.

As well as creating a smokescreen of obscure regulatory moves, the Council has failed to obey the law on information that must be made public.

The Council has failed to make the full ETO orders and formal ‘reasons’ for them, as well as Formal Objections, publicly available.

The Council also stated in a Freedom of Information Act request made last August, (FOI 42679) that: “The Council commissioned a number of surveys before measures were introduced in the West Greenwich (Hills and Vales) and Westcombe areas. Post implementation surveys have also been carried out on the same roads to capture the impact of modal filters. Once these results have been analysed, a summary of the report can be made available on request.”  The Council should disclose this monitoring, which has never been made public.

West ward Labour Councillors have told the local branch Labour Party that “a six month review” of the West Greenwich scheme will begin in March, followed by “a decision on its future” - a process “likely to take six to eight weeks”. Local Councillors are said to have “approved” the changes before implementation last summer.