News on Newham Waltham Forest LTN

As part of the Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) currently underway, Waltham Forest Council will begin the construction of ‘modal filters’ at five locations in South Leytonstone (Blenheim Road, Odessa Road, Ramsay Road, Thorpe Road and Hesketh Road) on Tuesday 1 September 2020.

The work will take approximately 1 to 2 weeks to complete and involves installing planters or signs at these locations to stop motorised vehicles from travelling through while still allowing access for walking and cycling.

The modal filter being installed on Odessa Road will be enforced by CCTV and there will be a gap between the planters to allow access for emergency vehicles only. All other motorised vehicles will not be allowed to travel through these modal filters and will be issued with a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) if they do.

To allow us to carry out the work safely and on time, we ask that people avoid parking in the works areas. There will be barriers, signs and traffic cones that show where parking is prohibited, and illegally parked vehicles will receive Penalty Charge Notices (PCN) and may be removed.

If you have any questions relating to these works please do not hesitate to email us at enjoy@walthamforest.gov.uk.

It’s been three weeks since the launch of the LTN scheme and we’ve already had a great response, with over 400 local people taking part to share their views on the scheme.

Over the next six months we’ll be monitoring your feedback to make sure we’re able to pick up any key issues or questions that you may have, and we have created a ‘ Your questions answered ’ section here to help tackle areas of concern.

Looking over comments collected these past weeks we can see that the key concerns being raised include the potential increase of traffic on main roads and how you and others can continue to access properties in the area. Please visit ‘Your questions answered’ to read our detailed responses to these and other questions raised.

Another area people have commented on is the consultation process for this scheme. The views of our residents are vital to the success of these schemes and important to councils as a whole, and so we’d like to take this opportunity to explain our consultation approach in a bit more detail.

Normally we would conduct an informal public consultation as well as other localised engagement activities with local people before building a scheme such as this. However due to the Covid-19 pandemic and a huge uptake in walking and cycling, we must ensure our roads are safe to use, as well as act on advice from central government to change our streets to support sustainable forms of transport.

This does not mean that we are rushing scheme delivery, but instead we are running our engagement activities alongside construction works; and working to create a dialogue with local people to ensure the changes are right for the area. The benefits of running engagement activities alongside live construction works, is that you can see the immediate effects of the changes and provide feedback on actual experiences.

We will run the online map-based survey (CommonPlace) for at least six months to capture the views of as many people in the area as possible, and then at key milestones in the project (dates to be confirmed), we will invite local people to complete a series of questions to give us more detailed feedback on the overall impact of the scheme, which will help us develop a permanent scheme. This will be done through this website, therefore please sign up to updates (if you haven't done so already) if you would like to be notified.

Please note that although we are not conducting an informal public consultation in advance, the scheme is subject to a statutory consultation, where residents can formally comment on the Experimental Traffic Orders (ETOs), within the first six months, and the London Boroughs of Waltham Forest and Newham have advertised the necessary ETOs and publicised these in accordance with legal requirements.

After the initial six-month period we will analyse all the feedback and data collected and report back to local people on the next steps. At this point, plans for a permanent scheme may be developed and require further input from local people, or we may need to continue to gather additional information from you via the engagement website.

This approach is new for both boroughs and so we are working to keep local people informed on the scheme, if you haven't done so already please take a moment to sign up to updates and encourage your neighbours to do the same, this way we hope to develop a scheme in partnership with you that is right for the whole community.