Serious Problems with CEC Consultation on Lanark Road Spaces for People Scheme
A
t our May and June meetings, we agreed to send a formal complaint to the Council about the unacceptable standard of ETRO (Experimental Traffic Regulation Order) notices in the ColCC area of Lanark Road. These notices formed an important part of the Council’s city-wide statutory notification and consultation on whether various traffic schemes, including that on Lanark Road, introduced under Spaces for People (now rebranded Traveling Safely), should be made permanent, removed or modified.
Our letter was sent on 17 July and broadly we complained about:
- the inadequate number of ETRO notices: only three to cover both sides of Lanark Road in the Colinton area
- the height of the ETRO notices: many were too high for the average person to read, excluding anyone less than 6ft+; in a wheelchair or mobility scooter
- how difficult the notices were to read/understand: local street names were listed with around 70 other street names; the typeface was all in capitals-particularly hard for people with dyslexia; long Roman numerals were used; and there were some 600 words on an A4 page
We also made a series of suggestions about how future consultations using ETRO notices could be improved.
We have since received a response thanking us for our suggestions and undertaking to look into the issues raised. Given that the whole Consultation has to be run again because of various internal flaws in the Council’s processes, here’s hoping that they make a better job of it next time!
The full text of our letter and the Council’s response are available in the links below.