Campaigners raising money to launch a legal challenge to reopen a road closed as a liveable neighbourhood in Bath hit their fundraising target in just seven days.
Looking down Sydney Place, with the new LTN restriction in place
Sydney Road was closed to through traffic on a trial basis in April as part of Bath & North East Somerset Council’s programme of liveable neighbourhoods, also called low-traffic neighbourhoods or LTNs.
Liveable neighbourhoods aim to make streets safer and more pleasant for cycling and walking, but others have argued that they just make other roads more dangerous
Campaigners launched a fundraiser earlier this month for a legal challenge to prevent the Sydney Road scheme from being made permanent. The campaign hit its £5,000 target in just seven days.
Organiser Neil McCabe said in an update posted on the gofundme.com page: “Many thanks for bringing us close to our goal. I had a Teams call with the barrister this morning and we are even more confident in our position.
“At the moment we’re waiting to see how B&NES responds to the objection I sent on 2 Oct.
“That will determine what we need to do next, and whether we need to ask for more contributions for a full court case.”
The challenge comes after one proposed liveable neighbourhood in another area of Bath was blocked by a legal challenge in August.
The council did not contest that challenge due to “minor technical issues” and missing their slot with their contractors, although it has insisted it will try to bring the plan back.
Now people near Sydney Road believe they have a case to make over the same technical issues in the council’s statement of reasons for the scheme.
A total of £5,261 has been raised so far, with an anonymous donor making a single donation of £500.
The fundraiser states that any funds not used in the legal challenge will be donated to the local hospice care charity Dorothy House.
In July, people from nearby roads around Sydney Road attended a full meeting of Bath & North East Somerset Council to warn of the impact of the scheme on nearby roads.
Alan Morely, who lives near the bottom of North Road which joins the A36 just before Sydney Road, said: “As a result of the closure, we now have more traffic queueing in front of our houses, particularly during school runs.”
A statement read out on behalf of Daniel Selwood, who lives on the edge of the Bathwick Estate but was unable to attend the meeting, said: “Near misses are happening the whole time because of the Sydney Road LTN. We see it daily. It is a near miss at the moment, it is not always going to be a near miss.”
It added: “Their liveable neighbourhood has become our unliveable neighbourhood.”
But at an earlier council meeting in May, people from Sydney Road and Sydney Place praised the scheme.
Mary Allan, who lives on Sydney Place, said: “We have been freed from the tyranny of the motor vehicle. Restricting through traffic has proved the only way to achieve this.”
The controversial scheme has even been debated in Parliament, with Bath MP Wera Hobhouse and former North East Somerset MP Jacob Rees-Mogg clashing over the issue shortly before Parliament was dissolved for the 2024 General Election.
At the Liberal Democrat Party Conference in September, a top councillor from the Liberal Democrat-run council read out a message in a speech to the conference from the council’s deputy leader stating: “We need more powers to be able to shut roads without quite so much ability for legal challenge.”
The council had originally planned to bring in 15 liveable neighbourhoods across the city, but this has been cut back to 11 due to “funding constraints” and the impact of inflation on construction costs.
John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter
