Healthy Neighbourhood

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Latest Proposed Scheme Design

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Living Streets Oct 2021 & Jun 2023 Reports

Living Streets were commissioned to handle the pre-consultation for both the abortive 2021 low-traffic neighbourhood (LTN) scheme and its subsequent 2023 revival.

We view their work as extremely poor, with both the 2021 and 2023 reports exaggerating support and mis-representing solicited feedback. In our view, they transmit the voice of their author far louder than any of the breadth of voices in the community.

An in-depth analysis of the presentation of the data and associated messages in the 2023 report revealed several egregious issues with their methodology, any one of which should disqualify the conclusions within by itself. We found 21 such issues:

Top 8 Issues

Playing fast & loose with sample sizes and scopes
- e.g. 2021 report: result used to justify reviving the BRAT area as a focus in 2023 considered just 37 people from 1193 households locally and presented a result out of just 20. The members of this sample were drawn from just one road – Dyne – yet presented as overwhelming support for action across the whole area.
Including out-of-area responses in results and conclusions
- 51 responses – Willesden Lane (6) + further afield – included in headline results, inflating the 249 relevant results to 315 and overall support (the 51 out-of-area respondents strongly support traffic action in their areas).
Vanished Dunster Gardens Response
- Admittedly small sample but 40 – 80% against (depending on specific question): all moved to ‘skipped’
Mis-representative Sample Mix
- Conflating a “finding” driven primarily by Dyne Road (79 of 268, 30%), or Dyne Road + out of area results (130 of 315, 41%) as somehow representative of the whole area. There were 8 streets surveyed. Dyne Rd is not 30% of the population of the area.
Survey Bias
- If all respondents ticked every box of the survey (i.e. both for and against the existence of issues) the outcome would be 10:1 in favour of the notion that there are traffic issues (instead of netting to zero/neutrality, as a well designed survey would)
The survey doesn’t reconcile with itself.
- There is a proportion of the population who say issues exist, but cause no impacts and/or happen at no time of day.
Exaggeration, misrepresentation, sweeping (unfair) generalisation, etc.
- e.g. ‘reckless’ appears in document 5 times, ‘speeding’ 14 times, etc. despite their own traffic data showing this didn’t exist in practice.
Despite all this, no one issue achieved a majority result
- The highest level of support, despite all this ‘engineering’, for any one issue was 41%

Further Issues

Objective Presentation Of Living Streets Data

BRAT Position (Proposed)

We believe that the scheme has been chosen and defined on false pretences but may present an opportunity nonetheless. However, the case has not been made for it in its current form, so it should be paused until its objectives are refined, re-focusing it back on issues residents raised at the outset. More specifically, we have asked Brent council to hold off on a decision about it until:

(1) we understand the outcome of the Thursday 21 March public meeting at the ICMP (there were no supporters of the scheme)

(2) we have analysed the most recent data from the (second) traffic measurements taken at the end of March / early April

(3) we have seen and analysed the results of the consultation survey

(4) we have reviewed the decision being taken on our behalf.

Given the strength of feeling we have found against the scheme fully scrapping it needs to be on the table as an option.

Traffic Data Analysis

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