The Central 6 Streets Plan
Are residential streets for driving through or living in?
“For decades we mourned that children no longer played in the street. Now once again, in some places, they do.”
Boris Johnson, Introduction to 2021 Policy Paper on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.
Since 2018, at the very beginning of Warrington Borough Council’s Central Six Regeneration Plan, we have consulted local residents in six of Warrington’s key central wards about ways the Council could use its powers to improve their lives.
After speaking with 2,500 local residents across the Central Six wards, we’ve found that people consistently want a“better, cleaner and safer environment” where they live, above all other issues.
Over the past four years, we’ve used the information gained by talking to locals in these areas to do plenty of good work.
We’ve invested half a million pounds in clamping down on crime in Bewsey and Whitecross, opened the Bewsey and Dallam Community Hub, and opened a brand-new 3G pitch at Victoria Park, among plenty of other things.
Most recently, however, and after listening to residents’ concerns about the areas in which they live, we’ve sought to trial a Low-Traffic Neighbourhood Scheme in specific parts of Orford and Westy.
This article will explain the reasoning behind the plans, try to address residents’ concerns about any negative effects, and explain what we hope the result of the LTNs will be in the areas affected.
What are Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods?
Put simply, a Low Traffic Neighbourhood seeks to reduce or remove through-traffic in an area. They’ve been around since the 1970s, but have recently become a key plank of the government’s policies to make Britain safer and healthier.
You can still drive to an LTN, it’s just not as easy to drive through it — although access to all properties by car is maintained. No one is “imprisoned in their homes”. In fact, far from it — the goal is to make being outside in a given part of town far easier, safer, and more pleasant for everyone.
Quieter, safer streets make walking and cycling for people of all ages and abilities much easier and less dangerous. They increase street socialising (for adults) and playing (for children), which builds up the fabric of a community. And, contrary to many of the arguments we are hearing from those Warringtonians opposed to the scheme, the evidence suggests they usually help rather than hinder local business.
When you drive, you travel in an expensive locked box from your home to your destination. When you walk or cycle, you rub shoulders with friends or family, and drop into local businesses. And, of course, you spend less money on petrol! This can have a tremendously powerful effect on the fabric and finances of local communities.
If you don’t believe us, listen to one of Britain’s leading LTN advocates — Boris Johnson. We don’t like him very much, but in mid-2020, the Conservative Prime Minister promised “to kick off the most radical change to our city streets since the arrival of mass motoring.” A year later, he stated:
“Almost exactly six years ago, in east London, we began the first of the transformational low-traffic neighbourhood schemes I funded as Mayor. There was intense controversy: hundreds of protestors carried a golden coffin to symbolise the “death” we were supposedly causing to the local shops.
But the council stuck it out, thank goodness. Now, the local shops and cafes have never been busier, air quality is up, opposition to the LTN has evaporated, and so has some of the traffic.”
The government thus pledged to provide £338 million in funding for local schemes like the Central 6 Streets Plan in 2021-22. It is £100,000 of this funding which we are using to pay for the LTN in Warrington.
As a result, we aren’t spending your Council Tax on the Central Six Streets Plan.
Why Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods?
The areas in question were selected for several reasons
Among them:
The level of economic hardship — we wanted to make sure we were spending the money somewhere it would make more of a difference to people’s lives.
Road traffic collision trends — we wanted to significantly improve road safety, not just fiddle round the edges.
The number of schools — we wanted to protect schoolchildren from air pollution, which is shown to seriously affect their health and learning. We also wanted to promote walking to school, which less than half of schoolchildren do at present.
The number of shops and services in easy walking distance — we didn’t want to stop people being able to get what they needed.
The proximity to big main roads, which are designed to accommodate significant numbers of cars — we didn’t want to stop anyone getting where they needed to go when they needed or wanted to use a car.
The Consultation
The idea of some sort of Streets Scheme was proposed to all residents in the affected areas in late 2021 with a letter inviting residents to answer a survey either online or by post. There were, in total, two online surveys, two in-person consultations and two online webinars between October and December 2021.
There were around 380 responses to both of the online surveys in total, and attendance was excellent at the two in-person consultation days at Orford Jubilee Hub.
Added to this was the longstanding informal consultation which has been taking place between local residents and their councillors for years about traffic and quality of life in the areas in question. Local councillors have been reporting for years that traffic was a worsening issue in the areas, and local people agreed when asked:
The Results
The survey’s respondents highlighted four key local issues above all others:
Speeding traffic.
Too much traffic in their local residential streets.
Litter, graffiti and fly-tipping.
Too much traffic passing through their neighbourhood.
As such, the Council and its partners – Living Streets, a charity that promotes walking as a mode of transport, and Mott Macdonald, an employee-owned civil-engineering consultancy with experience in road-traffic schemes – began to examine the options to address these issues in Orford and Westy.
The Public Engagement Report is freely available, and you can read it here.
The argument for Low Traffic Neighbourhoods
We are well aware that there is significant opposition to the scheme among Warringtonians at present. There is no point pretending otherwise. We are glad that people are actively sharing their concerns with the Council, their individual councillors and their MPs.
We want the scheme to take into account the views of everybody affected by it, although we would suggest that people wait until the LTN has had time to take effect before they decide whether they oppose or support it, fully or partly.
In this section, we will respond to a number of the most frequent objections we have received to the scheme:
Why are you going ahead with the scheme despite the opposition?
“I support councils, of all parties, which are trying to promote cycling and bus
use. And if you are going to oppose these schemes, you must tell us what
your alternative is, because trying to squeeze more cars and delivery vans
on the same roads and hoping for the best is not going to work.”
We respect residents’ right to object to the plans, and are recording the objections we receive. However, as the scheme has not commenced yet, objections to it are based mainly on individual predictions about what might happen rather than what has.
Evidence from around the country suggests this is a common trend when setting up Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Initially a significant number of residents in the surrounding area register their concern, but within a relatively short period of time and as the benefits become clear, the wind quickly changes.
“New research shows that the pandemic LTN schemes have halved road
injuries in their areas, compared with no reductions over the same period in
non-LTN areas. Other research has shown that LTNs reduce street crime”.
We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think it would make people’s lives better. At the end of the day, if all we do is annoy and inconvenience local residents, they’ll vote us out in two years.
We don’t want that — we want to be able to carry on making Warrington a safer, cleaner and more pleasant place to live.
Residents in these areas can feel unsafe, harangued or trapped in their homes as a result of the volume of traffic passing by their front doors. In some areas we studied, the noise pollution from cars was up to 75 decibels — the equivalent of standing next to a flushing toilet. Air quality consistently goes below acceptable limits, and road traffic injuries and fatalities are relatively commonplace.
All of this affects residents’ health, and the collective fabric of the community. And remember, this is taking place on streets which were built to be lived in, not driven through.
As you can see from the quote above, local Tories are in the interesting position of opposing one of their own government’s flagship policies. While we would rather he hadn’t misled the British people over his lockdown parties, and weren’t Prime Minister, we do agree with him on this issue.
So, like him, we’d ask local Tories — what’s your alternative?
“While the introduction of these measures may mean an initial period of some disruption to motorists due to changes in routing and travel habits, we believe this will be outweighed - once traffic patterns settle down - by the huge environmental and health benefits for the local community."
Russ Bowden, Leader of the Council.
How will I access my house/get to work/drop off my children by car?
All properties in the LTN zones will retain vehicle access. In fact, if you live in the zones affected, you will notice a significant decrease in through-traffic past your home.
Access to major roads, designed to cope with lots of traffic, will be maintained, though you may need to adjust your usual route. We expect that, in the vast majority of cases, changes to car journey-times will be reasonable and small.
In the event you live close enough to your workplace for you to walk (a mile or two) or cycle (a little bit further) — the changes will make it far easier, safer and more pleasant to do so.
Young people who go to school in or just outside the area will find it significantly safer and more pleasant to walk, cycle or scoot to school, with significantly reduced air pollution.
Won’t the changes have a bad impact on local businesses?
“There was intense controversy: hundreds of protestors carried a golden
coffin to symbolise the “death” we were supposedly causing to the local
shops. But the council stuck it out, thank goodness. Now, the local shops
and cafes have never been busier”.
This is a time of significant hardship for local businesses. Prices of essential goods are soaring and business energy rates are not capped, meaning many local shops, cafés and other services are already working overtime to make money.
We continue to lobby the government to take meaningful action on the cost of living and doing business. But, as stated above, we do not believe the evidence suggests local businesses will struggle as a result of the Orford or Westy LTNs.
Cases from places as varied as Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry, Glasgow, Dublin and London suggest increased customer footfall in LTN zones, that business owners consistently over-estimate the number of their customers who arrive by car, and that LTNs help to keep money in local communities.
We will keep an eye on the business situation in the two LTNs, and act if necessary to protect businesses and livelihoods.
Won’t traffic on the surrounding major roads get much worse?
“Traffic on the boundary main roads surrounding 12 new LTNs
was surveyed by the councils concerned before and after each
scheme. This shows, of the 50 boundary roads surveyed, traffic
had risen on 15 of them, and fallen on 35.”
We are particularly sympathetic to anyone who lives on the major roads nearby to the two proposed LTNs – such as the A50, Winwick Road or Thelwall Lane – who might be worried about an increased level of traffic outside their homes.
However, the evidence from existing schemes suggests that this is not the case.
Traffic will initially become slightly higher than usual on main roads as people get used to the scheme. However, results from similar schemes show that making it easier to walk, cycle and use public transport reduces the number of short journeys made by car will fall, thus reducing overall traffic levels.
Main roads and A-roads were purpose-built to take significant amounts of traffic, while side roads and residential streets were not. We will be monitoring the situation, and making adjustments (e.g. to traffic light timings) if necessary.
Why, when I pay Road Tax, should some roads be closed to me? What’s wrong with cars?
Private cars are a crucial part of how modern Britain gets around. We would certainly object to anyone who wants to get rid of them. But they have to be just that — a part of how we move goods and people around, not the only option.
We live at a turning point in recent history. Once petrol was very cheap, and whole areas of Britain – particularly Warrington – were designed around a culture of large-scale car use. See below:
Now, however, petrol is becoming more and more expensive and even being phased out. The global effects of mass-motoring’s large-scale carbon emissions are becoming clear, and Britain’s roads are heaving with traffic — which increased by a quarter in the decade between 2010 and 2020.
It’s increasingly unclear whether electric vehicles can be made cheap and environmentally-friendly enough to replace every single petrol car, and whether we’ll have to think differently about how we get around in future.
There is also a health crisis in this country, in which levels of chronic illness and disability as a result of a sedentary lifestyle are climbing year-on-year. But though it’s often quicker, easier and basically free, keeping fit “by accident” – by walking or cycling along roads that are choked with traffic – can be dangerous and unpleasant. And so the cycle continues.
Warrington’s traffic problems are legendary, and we think this is hurting some people far more than others. This pilot scheme might help us learn how to protect them.
Won’t the scheme affect the emergency services?
“Using years of data and more than 100,000 emergency callouts, academic research found that they do not increase emergency service response times — echoing statements made by the emergency services themselves about the post-pandemic LTN schemes”
Government Policy Paper, 2021
Nationally, emergency services typically see no change to response times in LTNs. On plans like this, blue-light services are what’s called “Statutory Consultees”. We could not have proceeded with the scheme without asking them for their input.
We will update all GPS providers with the new road layout, which will prevent any navigational issues with emergency services — and ordinary people using SatNavs, too.
Isn’t it just a cash grab?
Aside from the (clearly-signed) bus gate on Hallfields Road, there isn’t really a mechanism by which the Council can make money from this scheme. The scheme is designed to be easy to follow and clearly signed.
The goal isn’t to make local residents poorer by fining them, but to gradually improve the lives of people who live in the affected areas, and make it far easier and safer to use other modes of transport.
This is a fairly inexpensive scheme, it’s been carefully planned, and it’s paid for by a grant from the government. We aren’t doing a smash-and-grab on this.
Is the C6SP reversible?
“Changes in travel behaviour don’t happen overnight. We are noticing that
the longer a scheme is in place, the greater its effect, on both the LTN and
the surrounding roads. This is why we are clear that schemes must be given
enough time to prove – or disprove – themselves.”Government Policy Paper, 2021
We think the Central 6 Streets Plan will work well, and produce safer, cleaner, more active and more pleasant neighbourhoods.
However, we’ll constantly be reviewing hard data over the whole duration of the pilot scheme, which will be collected from the relevant areas and surrounding main roads. We’ll also be monitoring residents’ comments, and public opinion.
The timeline is flexible, and we expect an interim review after the scheme’s been in place for six to twelve months. This will let us fine tune the LTNs, especially if some elements of them are working well and others aren’t.
So, yes, the Central Six Streets Plan is reversible.
Conclusion
We continue to listen to and consult with local residents — we want to bring them on-side, and work with them to make the schemes a success.
We’ve taken note of the initial reaction, including the protest at the Town Hall. We’re pleased so many people feel able to let us know what they think, and we’re examining all of the options available to us at present.
We still think, after some initial ructions and a settling-down period, the proposals will become more popular. We still think they will make a significant number of people’s lives and livelihoods better in multiple ways — as LTNs have done for many people all over the country already.
However, we want to make sure we implement the schemes in a sensitive way, that doesn’t alienate the people who live in and around them.
Thank you for taking the time to read this long article. We hope it has has addressed some of your concerns. Please do continue to engage with the process, share your thoughts, and give the scheme a chance to prove its worth.
 | A guest post by
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Yep that’s fine but by doing this. I will now not shop at any local business and only go to main high street I will use online. I won’t eat out in Warrington and I certainly will not use the rubbish transport. All you have done is increase my childcare costs for the extra time it’s going to take to do my work routes. I will certainly vote against you in the next election. You are increasing my cost of living without an single care for any impact on anyone else. I will not walk my children in the rain to nursery which would take longer to get there! to make extra costs for more child care fees as they are going to need to be there earlier! to set off for work earlier! to work longer and get home later. I already don’t spend enough time with my kids and now your costing me money to spend less time with them.
what a load of patronising drivel - how in gods name can we be compared with London? they have a massive infrastructure, tube, buses etc. By closing roads here, you take away our already limited access to already overloaded main roads - We are being forced to join the traffic coming off the broken motorways, swing bridges, road works. How dare you make out that I can easily walk or get on a bike! - my "expensive box" is the ONLY way I can get to my place of work. I walk when ever I can, I don't have to be forced into it. I have never, in all my 50+ years been so angry at the council and government. And that is saying something!