Lendal Bridge recriminations continue

Lendal bridge without traffic

York been awarded a further £1million by the Department for Transport as a dispute about who paid for the Lendal Bridge trial has surfaced.

Refund decision- who decides and when?

None of the Council’s decision making bodies has considered a proposal to repay Lendal Bridge fines. It is merely a proposal to creep out for a “behind closed doors” meeting of the Labour Group. It is a key decision but does not appear in the Councils forward plan. The last time the Council considered the issue Labour Councillors combined to vote down a request for an independent scrutiny review of the failings of, and lessons to be learned from, the Lendal and Coppergate trials.

Now a decision date will have to be set and a report on the methodology – and costs – of setting up a refund system will have to be written and published. The ultimate success of a proposal to repay fines is not in doubt, as both Opposition parties (LibDem and Tory) have previously called for the refunds to be made. There is considerable doubt, though, about when such payments might start and what paperwork vehicle owners may be expected to complete.

How much did it cost and who pays?

The present government allows Local Authorities a large measure of devolution on transport spending priorities and last year the Councils Labour Leadership chose to spend some grant money on access restriction hardware (such as ANPR cameras).

This totalled around £100,000 and is money that has now effectively been lost. The latest grant allocation (see below) was made before the York Council made its announcement about refunding Lendal Bridge fines, so it remains to be seen whether the fiasco will adversely impact on future transport funding allocations for the City.

The vast majority of the costs of the Lendal Bridge and Coppergate schemes were funded by fine income. The detail was reported to the Cabinet earlier in the month Click here for report Para 23 makes it clear that £1.756 million in fine income had been received by the end of March. Administrative costs were £718,000. In the main, those were the costs of enforcement and processing the FPNs. The Council has never revealed how much it was charged by the Peterborough based company that it used to process the fine notifications.

LTP3 – What did it say?

Some commentators are also claiming the the Local Transport Plan (LTP3), submitted to government in 2010 when the Council was LibDem led, somehow prompted the Lendal Bridge access restriction trial. The plan can still be viewed on the Council’s web site click here

The Plan does suggest a trial which would have given public transport priority on Ouse Bridge (not Lendal Bridge) in the medium term (2019). However that was conditional on other network improvements being completed – notably to to the northern by pass and to Park and Ride facilities – in the interim. The Labour Leadership must accept full responsibility for trying to bounce an ill considered Lendal Bridge scheme, onto an unsuspecting public, before even the two new Park and Ride sites had been completed.

£1 million more from Government

We hope that the Council will get back to basics and ensure that there is full public discussion of their plans for the use of this money. They have gone backwards recently with the removal of card payment options at the Maygate car park, travellers can no longer look on the web to see which car parks are full and on street visual display boards are often not working.

Well used sub-urban bus stops still don’t have real time “next bus arriving” screens yet.

All are issues that need addressing before anymore money is squandered on “vanity” projects
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Lendal bridge – always been busy at 5;00pm

No matter how much Labour may spin their decision to scrap the access restrictions on Lendal bridge they still have a lot of questions to answer.

Around 80,000 motorists want to know when their unlawfully imposed fines will now be refunded?

Residents will want to know why the ANPR cameras were not turned off at the end of the trial period (28th February) ?

Why has there has been no announcement on the future of the Coppergate restrictions?

Who will take responsibility for the mistakes?

The Lendal Bridge restrictions will be removed this weekend.

Labour Councillors have made the decision tonight based on a report that has so far not been made public.

An all party inquiry into the shambles is promised.

It is also worth remembering the warnings that were given last summer and which Labour chose to ignore.

Liberal Democrat Councillor Keith Aspden commented;

“Labour were left with no choice but to reopen Lendal Bridge after the ruling from the Government Adjudicator last week. Even so this is an embarrassing U-Turn from a Labour Cabinet which has insisted all along that the closure is lawful and the restrictions were working.

“It was a botched trial from the start which has made congestion worse and damaged local businesses. It is now time for the Cabinet Member and Leader to take responsibility and resign.

“We also need urgent answers over whether the council will continue to use taxpayers money to fund its legal battle and whether it plans to repay the 53,000 plus motorists who were fined unlawfully.”

The media are reporting that Labour Councillors will decide tonight whether or not to scrap the access restrictions on Lendal Bridge.

This may be so. They have to find a way out of the mess before they get embroiled in expensive legal proceedings and before the government is asked to step in and take action.

Labour operate a strict “whip” system. That means that whatever the majority of the Group decides everyone subsequently votes for the party line at committee and Council meetings. It also means that electors never actually find out what their representatives actually think of proposals!

There is talk of having a “Special Council Meeting” to discuss and determine the issue at some time over the next week.

Lovers of the theatre might appreciate such an event, but it is not strictly necessary.

The Lendal Bridge restrictions, at least, can be suspended immediately (as they should have been on 28th February) with a proposal to formally revoke the traffic order being approved at the next Cabinet meeting.

Coppergate

It was, after all, the cabinet that approved Dave Merrett’s report and proposal at its May 2013 meeting.

But getting to the bottom of what really went wrong will require a detailed, almost forensic, examination.

That is where the Councils all party scrutiny committees should be involved.

That would leave the tricky problem of Coppergate.

Although access restrictions are never popular with everyone, general traffic has been excluded from Coppergate for nearly two decades.

What Labour did a year ago was to extend the hours of operation of the ban and install ANPR cameras to enforce the new restrictions.

As we pointed out yesterday, Council officials had raised concerns in early 2013 about the plan but the changes were made anyway.

We doubt if the majority of residents would want to return to a day time free for all on a narrow street like Coppergate, which lies in the heart of the central shopping area.

We suspect most citizens would however like to be consulted on options.

In the meantime the Council had better concentrate on finding ways of addressing the issues raised by the traffic adjudicator.

Sources within the Council have admitted that it is unlikely that the result of their appeal against the ruling of the Traffic Adjudicator on Lendal Bridge and Coppergate will be known for over 3 months.

This means that if a decision is – as planned – taken at the May cabinet meeting, on whether to make the restrictions on Lendal Bridge permanent, then Councillors will not know whether they could be legally enforced.

It also means that anyone driving on the roads at present – and for several weeks into the future – could not have PCNs enforced against them because they would be outside the 28 days time limit.

The Council have now said that they are no longer issuing fines to motorists misusing the access restrictions on both Lendal bridge and Coppergate.

As we predicated last week, the Council would have been unable to sustain any PCN notices following the decision of the Traffic Adjudicator that ANPR enforcement was unlawful.

Having maintained for nearly a week that they were “unable to say” whether the cameras had been switched off (as they should have been on Lendal bridge at the end of the trial period on 28th February), the Council has confirmed that no fine notices are being issued.

Apparently the cameras are still recording.

If the Council hopes to use this information, then legally they only have 28 days in which to issue the PCN – much less than the period likely to be necessaryd for them to progress an “appeal” against the Traffic Adjudicators ruling.

So big brother is watching and waiting

The Council statement reads

During the trial 95 per cent of drivers have adhered to the restrictions in place on Lendal bridge and the number of vehicles breaching the restriction had reached a peaked and started to decline. We’ve always said the trial was not to generate revenue, but to reduce traffic going over the bridge and through the city centre, as part of a long-term vision to create an even more attractive and thriving city centre for everyone.

As such, once the six month data collection had been completed, the council reviewed and reduced the levels of enforcement, at its discretion, during the restricted hours. Since this point, not every private vehicle breaching the restrictions has received a PCN. This is in line with similar schemes around the country.