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Crystal Palace and South Norwood Low Traffic Neighbourhood

Meeting: 12/04/2021 - Cabinet (Item 62)

Call-In Referral to Cabinet: Crystal Palace and South Norwood Low Traffic Neighbourhood (Deferred)

Cabinet Member: Cabinet Member for Sustainable Croydon, Councillor Muhammad Ali

Officer: Interim Executive Director Place, Sarah Hayward

Key decision: yes

Decision:

This report was deferred to a Cabinet meeting following the elections on 6 May 2021.

 

Minutes:

The Leader of the Council (Councillor Hamida Ali) informed Members that the report had been deferred due to the Pre-Election Period and would be considered at a future meeting of Cabinet following the elections on 6 May 2021.

 


Meeting: 23/03/2021 - Scrutiny & Overview Committee (Item 24)

24 Call-In: Crystal Palace and South Norwood Low Traffic Neighbourhood pdf icon PDF 154 KB

To consider and respond to the Call-In in accordance with the procedure set out in the Council’s constitution.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Chair of the Scrutiny & Overview Committee, Councillor Sean Fitzsimons introduced the Call-In of the ‘Crystal Palace and South Norwood Low Traffic Neighbourhood’ key decision. It was highlighted that two call-in requests had been received for this decision and although the Council’s Constitution only allowed one call-in per decision, it had been agreed that the spokesperson for each call-in would be allowed to address the Committee to highlight the reasons for making the request.

The Chair explained the process for considering a call-in, confirming that the Committee needed to agree whether to review the decision and if it was decided to proceed, to confirm how much time it wished to allocate for the discussion of the item. The Committee agreed that it would review the decision and allocated two hours and thirty minutes for its consideration.

The Chair went on to explain that there were three outcomes the Committee could reach as a result of its review. These were:-

1.    That no further action was necessary and the decision could be implemented as originally intended.

2.    To refer the decision back to the Cabinet for reconsideration, outlining the nature of the Committee’s concerns

3.    To refer the decision to Council, if the Committee considered that the decision taken was outside of the Budget and Policy Framework.

At the outset of the item the Chair gave Councillors Stephen Mann and Gareth Streeter, as the spokesperson for their respective call-ins the opportunity to outline their concerns about the original decision.

Councillor Mann advised that he felt that a few amendments were required to the scheme in order to bring the community along. The current proposal had split the community, which in some cases had led to unacceptable abuse. There were long term road traffic issues in the area that the scheme was attempting to address, but consideration needed to be given to issues such as deliveries in the low traffic neighbourhood (LTN), what was the right amount of traffic in the zone and how to improve cross border communication.

Councillor Streeter advised that grounds for the call-in he had submitted looked at the fundamentals of the scheme, as it was perceived that the Council had not gathered enough evidence or could ever gather enough evidence to justify the scheme. Without this evidence, there was a worry that the scheme was fiscally motivated. Although, any money raised would be ring fenced, it meant that any money spent in a restricted way allowed other general funds to be spent elsewhere. In the next few months businesses would be reopening and there was a concern that the new scheme would deter people from visiting the shops at Crystal Palace.

Following the introduction to the call-in, the Council’s Head of Highways and Parking, Mark Averill, delivered a presentation to the Committee setting out the reasons why the scheme was being implemented. A copy of the presentation can be found on the Council’s website on the following link:-

https://democracy.croydon.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=166&MId=2599&Ver=4

The Cabinet Member for Sustainable Croydon,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 24