‘What is the council doing to make the LTN camera filters more visible to drivers?’

• ISLINGTON Council has collected in a breathtaking £10.8million (and climbing) in PCN, penalty charge notices, fine revenue from its LTN, low traffic neighbourhood, camera filters.

Nearly half of that has come from the Highbury LTN trial filters alone. This means that roughly 166,000 times vehicles have driven through Islington’s LTN camera filters (which doesn’t include the fines that the council has cancelled).

What, therefore, is the council doing to make the LTN camera filters more visible to drivers, so that there are fewer breaches and fewer fines? Very little it would seem, given the sheer volume of fines.

As not driving through the closed roads is a fundamental part of the LTN vision, why is the council dragging its feet on this?

Against this backdrop, of 166,000 breaches, what is also perplexing is why Islington Council has only granted 900 – of the roughly 8,000 – Islington blue badge holders some LTN camera-filter exemption (limited to the filters in the disabled resident’s “home LTN”), and has strongly resisted all requests to allow all of its blue badge holders an automatic right to drive / be driven through all LTN camera filters.

The council must surely know that were Islington blue badge holders to be granted automatic borough-wide access they wouldn’t all be out every day driving / being driven around on Islington’s LTN camera-filtered roads. It would hardly be a deluge of vehicles. It wouldn’t be anywhere like the 166,000 breaches.

I know the council is belatedly trialling a top-up concession, more than a year after it agreed to bring this in. From what I have seen this trialled concession is cumbersome to access and, unfortunately, it’s probably safe to assume that the number of disabled residents that it will be granted to will be low.

Islington Council’s miserable approach under the LTN trials towards its blue badge holders and other disabled residents doesn’t do it any favours.

How can it seemingly not mind drivers driving through its LTN camera filters in their hundreds of thousands when they are paying to do so in fines, but be troubled that its 8,000 or so blue badge holding residents will spoil the trials if they are allowed to drive / be driven freely through the camera filters?

Curiously I do see council vans sailing through my nearby LTN camera filter. Does that trouble the council too?

RACHEL BOLT
Highbury LTN