Jody Graber speaking at an anti-LTN protest

A NEW Liveable Neigh­bourhood Scheme is no closer to completion after three years of consul­tation, and £600,000 spent in public money, it was revealed this week.

The plans for the Liveable Neighbourhood in Barnsbury were first proposed in 2021, but have come under fire from local residents and neighbours who have argued that there is no traffic problem to be solved in the first place, and that the measures will simply shift cars on to already congested routes.

Despite the opposition, however, councillors have pressed ahead with consultations on the scheme, and have racked up costs of £635,279 in council staff time, consultants’ fees, and publicity.

But the Tribune understands that the scheme has now come to a standstill and there is little clarity over if or when it will proceed at all.

Halting the scheme has been welcomed by campaigners from Save Our Lungs Liverpool Road, who have argued a Liveable Neighbourhood in Barnsbury and Laycock would only push more traffic onto their heavily congested street.

“I’m not anti-LTN, I do think there is a real place for them. But they [the council] are scratching the wrong itch with their [transport] strategy,” said Jo Michaelides, who set up the group in 2023,

“I’m grateful that they’ve not just pushed ahead with what they were going to because it would have been catastrophic for our road, and Mackenzie Road.”

She added, however, that the consultation had been a huge “waste of money”. Ms Michaelides told the Tribune: “If they’d spent a fraction of that money on trying to improve the volume of traffic on Liverpool Road, we may have seen some change. Instead, they’re trying to implement this in Barnsbury which is already quiet. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Meanwhile, Nick Collin, from Keep Islington Moving, which campaigns against LTNs, labelled the £600,000 figure as “outrageous”.

He said: “In any case, they completely underestimate the indirect costs. These are just the costs for the planning. The implementation and the awful indirect costs in terms of the suffering of residents of Barnsbury and Laycock will be orders of magnitude higher.”

Jody Graber, who discovered the figures, added: “I do feel this is one of the worst gravy trains Islington’s had. For five years, £650k spent, nothing delivered. It is a travesty, there’s a lot better things that the council could be spending its money on. If ever a department needed a DOGE, then that department definitely needs it.

Of what happens next, Mr Collin said he hoped the Town Hall would “quietly drop” the scheme. He told the Tribune: “They’ve never really done a proper cost-benefit analysis. It’s really become apparent that LTNs have awful effects. They are a dreadful inconvenience to anyone who really needs to use a car, not just elderly people, but for all sorts of tradespeople and shops and pubs and delivery people.”

Freedom of Information requests seen by the Tribune show that almost £5million has been spent on seven LTNs since 2020.

Ms Michaelides said: “You just wonder: why this push on LTNs, rather than looking at which are the roads suffering with the most traffic and focusing on them to try and reduce traffic and pollution?”

Rowena Champion, the Town Hall’s environment chief, said that schemes like this were “vital” in making Islington “a more sustainable borough where local people all have the chance to thrive and live healthy lives.”

She added: “We’ve been working extensively with local people, groups, and businesses in Barnsbury and Laycock to understand how we can improve the area.

“There is still further work to be done to develop a thoughtful and impactful liveable neighbourhood and so will be continuing to engage with residents, reviewing plans including traffic reduction measures and informing and strength­ening the evi­dence base for any designs.”