Shared Spaces

Lord Tope Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, join all others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, on securing this debate. I particularly want to pay tribute to him for his persistence in raising and highlighting this issue, and to that of the noble Lord, Lord Low, in previous years. I do not actually believe, speaking as a former councillor for 40 years, that most local authorities deliberately set out to make life difficult for people. It might often feel like that, but I do not think that that is actually the reality. The service that the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, has given to us has been to highlight the important issues that local authorities simply have not thought about as much as they should have—in particular, the attention that should be given to the public sector equality duty when considering traffic schemes. We do so in so many other ways, but so often, in my experience anyway, when looking at a traffic scheme it is not properly considered, or if it is, it is only in relation to those with mobility difficulties as distinct from sensory ones.

I wanted to contribute today with some local experience. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, in introducing the debate, made a passing reference to Hackbridge. Hackbridge is in the London Borough of Sutton, where I was a councillor for 40 years until last year. It is very close to the London Borough of Merton, where the Minister was a councillor for a rather lesser period, but it may well be that he knows personally the area to which I am going to refer. My attention was first drawn to this debate by my former colleagues in Sutton; they had been informed about it at a very early stage by Sutton Vision, and in particular by its vice-chair, Michael Parsons, and by Tracey Collins, who also lives in Hackbridge, from whom my colleagues had received huge help in the area of Hackbridge.

The ambition is to make Hackbridge a sustainable suburb, probably the first in the UK, by the year 2020. Much work is being done with the local community towards this aim. As part of this, last year a scheme was completed, investing £1.4 million in the area to make it more accessible and more attractive. This scheme included the new road layout and the provision of a number of what are called “informal crossings”, particularly around a busy road junction and by a local primary school.

A subsequent independent user survey found that 83% of those surveyed believed that the scheme had improved their perception of the area; 80% said that it had made the area more attractive and appealing; and 68% said that it had enhanced their satisfaction with the local shopping area. Even the local shopkeepers were happy. There is no doubt that the area is now more visually attractive, but—and it is an important “but”—that is of no benefit to those who cannot see it. The provision of so many informal crossings, but no controlled crossings, on busy roads means that the visually impaired no longer feel safe crossing those roads.

Michael Parsons, to whom I referred earlier, who lives in the area and uses a guide dog, no longer feels able to use his local shopping centre, which he has used for many years, because he cannot cross the busy road. He and others like him cannot know whether all the vehicles coming from either direction have seen him and have stopped. He does not know for sure where the pavement ends and the highway begins, because there is no kerb. We have produced a visually attractive scheme which has had the effect of excluding a significant minority of the local community. This sums up the issues that we are debating today.

Needless to say, important lessons have been learned. Next month, Sutton Council will begin a wide public consultation on four options for tackling these issues. All the options have passed an independent safety audit, and all include a zebra crossing—in other words, a controlled crossing to replace the current informal crossing nearest the school—and provide other controlled crossings. The debate is primarily about where to locate such crossings. When this is all done and the work is carried out, I hope that Michael Parsons and others in his position will again feel safe crossing the road to use their local shopping centre.

I had not intended my contribution to be a debate about Hackbridge—I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, even for mentioning it—but I see it as a real example of the issues that we are debating today. Hackbridge had a scheme designed by experienced traffic engineers from the Greater London Authority and Sutton Council with a huge amount of local community involvement, all with the best of intentions, and it produced a high level of local satisfaction. But within a year, it has had to be redesigned simply because it did not pay enough attention to the needs of the visually impaired.

I have asked my Sutton colleagues what I should ask for in this debate. All of them, councillors and officers alike, said that the present guidance is woefully inadequate and sometimes contradictory, particularly in respect of the needs of visually impaired people. All of them said that there is an urgent need for the guidance to be reviewed and for new guidance to be produced. As is often the case, views differ on whether such guidance should be statutory—I would be interested in the Minister’s view on that—but in support of the need for it to be statutory I will repeat a comment made to me that, like economists, no two traffic engineers ever agree with each other. In my view, there is an added problem in that, unlike economists, every one of us, and certainly every driver, believes that we are an expert traffic engineer.

I learned from the excellent briefing from Guide Dogs that the previous Government committed to review and update their guidance by the end of 2012. That has still not happened. Are the present Government still committed to this review and, if so, by when? Or perhaps I could ask—a little cheekily—whether it was a commitment forced by the Liberal Democrat part of the coalition Government which has now been dropped by the new Conservative Government. I hope that that alone might prompt an answer from the Minister.

As has been said, the enthusiasm for shared space originates from the Netherlands, where it is quite widespread. I am not competent to talk about the success or otherwise of schemes there, but I again have some personal experience by association. My son lived and worked in Amsterdam for seven years where, as for so many others, a bicycle was his main mode of local transport—unlike the many years he spent living in the London Borough of Sutton. When he came back to the UK, he moved to Oxford, where he still lives. Oxford must be one of the British cities most used to cyclists, yet my son was astonished by the contrast between the attitudes of road users in Amsterdam and those in Oxford.

This is not a debate about cycling, but this contrast does illustrate why shared space may well work in the Netherlands, if it does, but not in the UK. It is not just about good design; it is just as much about road user culture and attitude. In the Netherlands, there is a much greater tolerance between different types of road user and a much better understanding and acceptance of their different needs and difficulties. Perhaps the Minister can say something about what the Government are doing to change attitudes and increase tolerance and understanding among British road users with regard to shared space, but until that is achieved, shared space will not work naturally, however attractive it may look to those who can see it. Regulation and good design, drawn from practical experience, will still be required. I very much endorse the call made by my noble friend Lady Kramer for a proper summit involving all interested parties before a consultation and before the revised guidance is produced.

Reference has also been made to the problem of silent vehicles. All of us will have experienced the problem of silent cyclists who regard the pavement or footpath as a shared space, often because they do not feel safe on the highway. That problem is now growing with the increase in the number of electric and hybrid vehicles that move silently up behind us all, so I hope that the Minister can also say whether the Government accept that as an issue that must be addressed in respect of shared space or more widely.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, for giving us this most interesting and important debate. We look forward to the Minister’s reply. I am quite sure that the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, will continue to persist as vigorously as he has done up to now.