Low Traffic Neighbourhoods: why local councils, not the Prime Minister, should decide
By Tim Knox
Editor EGF
Today, it has been announced that the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has ordered a review of low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) in England.
This blog is not concerned with whether LTNs are a good idea or not. They may be. Or they may not be. This blog is only concerned with who should decide whether they are set up in any particular locality. Should it be the Prime Minister? Perhaps not, as he does have a few other things to worry about. Should it be the Secretary of State for Transport? Well, he too has quite a bit to keep an eye on from HS2 to the Integrated Rail Plan to delivery on the National Infrastructure Strategy, not to mention dealing with industrial action on the railways and at the airports.
Or should it be the people who live within any actual or proposed LTN? Aren’t they best placed to judge whether any particular scheme is working or not? Can’t they hold their local politicians accountable for how a local LTN is working? Won’t local politicians be so much more likely to respect the wishes of their electorate?
And once it is clear that local decisions are taken best by local councils, then people will know who to blame if something is done which they do not approve of – or who to praise when they get it right. That would be localisation in action. And think how much better a system this would be then the current mess where no one really knows who is responsible for the LTNs, let alone how the funding and monitoring of them works. Westminster? Their local MP? Whitehall? The Council? Some combination of all of them?
There may just be one area where central government can play a useful role: in providing clear reporting structures for how new initiatives such as LTNs can be measured; for as long as the data is comparable between local areas, then people can tell what works. And make their judgement accordingly.
So central politicians should surrender control of all these areas of popular concern and delegate it, in perpetuity, to those who are best able to decide what works best for them: local politicians and local electorates.
See our report, the Effective Decentralisation of Government for more information.