By John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter: The closure of Sydney Road in Bath to through traffic will be there to stay. That is what was decided at Bath and North East Somerset Council last week.
The Liberal Democrat-run council installed bollards across the road to create the Sydney Road and New Sydney Place Liveable Neighbourhood in April 2024. It has been perhaps the most controversial of the council’s already polarising liveable neighbourhoods.
Closing it means vehicles heading along the A36 into Bath now have to go by Beckford Road — where traffic has increased by about 35-30% a day. These are council figures which it says were not collected while the A36 was closed at Limpley Stoke.
The scheme was always only ever officially in place on a trial basis, with a consultation running alongside the scheme, until the single-member decision to make the scheme permanent was taken by council cabinet member Mark Elliott (Lansdown, Liberal Democrat) in February.
12 opposition councillors “called-in” the decision, bringing it before the council’s climate emergency and sustainability scrutiny committee on March 13. A call-in does not overturn a council decision, but can ask that it be reconsidered or be voted on by full council.
Leading the call-in, Colin Blackburn (Independent, Westmoreland) said: “An LN [liveable neighbourhood] is meant to bring improvements to air quality, not pass it on and increase it elsewhere. It should reduce congestion. Of course closing a road gives an immediate reduction for a few, but not to those areas it is displaced too.”
He said: “If you allow it in its current form, you will lose the goodwill of all those who believe in democracy, transparency, and fairness.”
The committee, on which the Liberal Democrats have a majority, voted to dismiss the call in — but only after locals and councillors spent more than two hours debating the controversial scheme. Here is what people had to say:
Safety fears
The council’s liveable neighbourhood programme is intended to stop speeding on residential streets and create safer and more pleasant areas for walking, wheeling, and cycling. But some have warned that the liveable neighbourhood is making the area less safe by creating more congestion, and pushing more traffic down Beckford Road.
Colin Blackburn (Westmoreland, Independent) who led the call-in told the committee: “I and many others believe there are some really compelling opportunities to implement [liveable neighbourhoods], but not without wider joined up thinking with genuine options for residents to use alternative methods and proper consideration given to safety — especially those of the cyclists these are meant to serve, as well as the younger persons going to schools.”
He said he had heard from a cyclist who commutes along Sydney Road that the increased congestion approaching the road had made them feel “unsafe,” and who added that they now had to dodge pedestrians in the middle of Sydney Road. He added that another local said their 12-year-old son no longer cycled to school due to the increased traffic.
Joanna Wright (Green, Lambride), who also signed the call-in, said: “My experience as a cyclist using this route most days is that the liveable neighbourhood has not improved the situation for me or for others.”
Meanwhile local man Neil McCabe, who has been fundraising for a legal challenge to the liveable neighbourhood, said that the liveable neighbourhood was pushing traffic onto North Road and Sham Castle Lane. He told the committee that the head of Bathwick St Mary School believes it is “imperative to reopen Sydney Road to keep children safe.”
He said that there were no traffic accidents recorded on Sydney Road in the last five years, but that there had been on roads where traffic was now being diverted. Mr McCabe said: “By driving traffic onto less safe roads without providing alternatives, in the fifth most congested city in the UK, B&NES is demonstrating its incompetence.”
But supporters of the scheme disagreed. Ceris Humphreys told the meeting that she had been hit by a vehicle on Sydney Road herself, but had never reported it. Timothy Lloyd told the meeting he did not agree with the assertion that traffic had been displaced on to less safe roads. He said: “My proposition that it has been displaced from a less safe road.”
An ‘unreasonable’ decision
Those opposed to the scheme have argued that people living nearby were not consulted before the scheme was installed. They argued the decision may need to be overturned if it is judged to fail something called “the Wednesbury reasonableness test” — meaning that it was such an unreasonable decision that no reasonable person acting reasonably could have made it.
Dr Ian Orpen told the committee that residents on North Road — including those just 40 feet from the junction — had been excluded from the engagement before the scheme was implemented, and 18 of the 19 houses on the road had signed a letter to say they had not known about it. He said: “They didn’t know about it until it was about to be implemented. […] How can that possibly be reasonable?”
But Mr Elliott said that “extensive engagement” had been carried out since 2021, including writing to thousands of households, public meetings, pop-up events, consultations, and the consultation which ran while the scheme was in place as a trial. He said: “This is the most consulted on scheme that we have done. [The West of England Combined Authority] told us to stop consulting and get on with it.”
1,899 people responded to the consultation on the scheme — with 76% opposed to the scheme, and 24% in favour. Of the 104 responses from people living on Sydney Road and New Sydney Place, 72% were in favour of the scheme; but the 684 respondents living on nearby roads within the trial area were 70% against.
Mr Elliott said: “I acknowledge that the headline figure of 76% opposition from the wider area […] however crucially within the neighbourhood directly impacted by the scheme, 72% of residents support the measures.”
A “permanent structure?”
But Alasdair Barron, another public speaker against the scheme, said the consultation had been “meaningless” anyway as infrastructure the liveable neighbourhood had been built out in final form before the start of the trial, with new kerbs and pavements at a redesigned junction and bollards installed.
He said: “Costs of over £300k were incurred unnecessarily. […] You skipped over the trial and built out a permanent structure right at the start.”
But Liberal Democrat councillors insisted this was not true. Committee chair Andy Wait (Keynsham East) said: “These are temporary structures. They can easily be removed.” Mark Elliott (Lansdown) added that “bolt down” bollards had been used as they were cheaper than planters. He added that the infrastructure as built would be removed and replaced at the end of the trial — with new improvements to be made for cyclists to be included in the final design.
The liveable neighbourhood cost £306.3k. Bath and North East Somerset Council had told the Local Democracy Reporting Service in March 2024 that the costs of removing or retaining the scheme would be worked out in future budget forecasting.
Complaints from car drivers ‘a measure of success’
Supporting the scheme, travel change expert and University of Bath researcher Sarah Toy urged the council: “Stand strong in the face of this opposition from a vocal minority of car drivers. […] Opposition will fade away as the benefits become clear to everyone.”
Council reports said the journey along Beckford Road only took five seconds longer than it had before the trial, although drivers had lost the ability to shave 40 seconds off their journey by going down Sydney Road.
Ms Toy said: “Receiving complaints from car drivers suffering the inconvenience of a detour is also, in my opinion, a measure of success. It means drivers are being asked to change their behaviour. This is what Bath needs to do to achieve the city’s climate, road safety, air quality, and active travel goals.”
She added: “As a transport professional, I am confident that the council’s consultation process has been robust, fair and inclusive. The reason for calling in this campaign is political and not evidence-based.”
‘Bullying’ campaign
What looks like a simple traffic scheme has caused real and serious division in the local community. Ms Toy told the committee: “The vocal minority campaign against has been delivered in an aggressive and bullying way which has, I know, frightened people away from publicly supporting the scheme.”
Meanwhile, those opposed to the liveable neighbourhood have said that signs they have put up outside their homes against the scheme have been torn down.
Do the Greens support it?
The call-in meeting in Bath happened the morning after Green-led Bristol City Council sent police and council contractors into working class Barton Hill at 3am to install the final bus gates needed for its East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood, which had faced strong opposition from some locals. But in Bath and North East Somerset, it is the Liberal Democrats who run the council and are driving its liveable neighbourhood programme.
Ms Wright, who leads the Green group on Bath and North East Somerset Council, had written the council’s policy on liveable neighbourhoods when she was a Liberal Democrat cabinet member. But since defecting to the Green Party, she has warned against how the liveable neighbourhoods have been implemented.
She told the committee she was “disappointed” that the Green Party had been singled out as opposing the council’s liveable neighbourhood policy. She said: “I fully support it, but it’s about the right measure in the right place. And over the last four years I have repeatedly asked for a circulation plan.”
She said: “The process to date has been that a decision was made on a few areas, with no considered joined-up thinking on how they link together […] and who they affect.” She signed the call-in of the Sydney Road liveable neighbourhood, but abstained on the vote on whether to dismiss the call in.
There were a large number of substitutions on the committee, meaning that several regular members were replaced by other councillors from their party. But nevertheless, the committee voted to dismiss the call-in by 6-2. All six Liberal Democrats voted in favour of dismissing the call in, with June Player (Westmoreland, Independent) and Robin Moss (Westfield, Labour) voting against.
What happens next?
Speaking after the meeting, Mr Elliott said: “I am pleased that the panel dismissed the call-in, having heard that the decision had been made after careful consideration, with the right processes in place and following wide consultation. We recognise that people have different views on this but we always take a balanced view by considering objections alongside the specific evidence of what is actually happening, the overall aims of the scheme and our own policies on active and sustainable travel.
“Crucially, the panel heard that 72% of those living inside the Liveable Neighbourhood support it and most of the objections came from outside of the Bathwick area. The panel also clearly did not accept that we did not engage with residents as we mailed 3,000 households about the scheme.
“This trial was a six-month public consultation with the measure in place. It gave everyone plenty of opportunity to experience the measure and raise their views.”
But now the council could face a legal challenge over the plans. Mr McCabe said the decision was “disappointing but not unexpected.” He said: “[The] next step is to seek our options on legal action both in terms of this was an unreasonable decision […], if they have breached transport law, and also if they have breached the equalities act.”
People opposed to the liveable neighbourhood have so far donated more than £7,000 to the fundraiser. Mr McCabe said: “This is very much a community led thing and we do have lawyers involved in this who think our chances are pretty good.”
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