Agenda item

Question from Nicola Dryden, Resident

"As per a freedom of information request, PCNs at the Bagley’s Lane l New King’s Road yellow box junction have increased a whopping 83% in the four weeks prior and post the Harwood Terrace closure yielding an additional £213,760 for the Council. Why has the Council not liaised with TfL to adjust the lighting sequence at the "money box" junction given the thousands of vehicles displaced by the unilateral closure of Harwood Terrace?"

Answer from Councillor Wesley Harcourt, Cabinet Member for the Environment

“Good evening Ms Dryden, thanks very much for that question.

We have actually approached TfL about changing the sequence of those lights. As you know that is a particularly difficult junction anyway and the amount of storage space i.e. the space between the yellow box and the next set of traffic lights, the one at the bottom of Harwood Road, is fairly limited. It’s okay if you’re going right and then left up Harwood Road, you can get round it - it’s the other bit but we need to try and get TfL to tweak that a little bit more and we’ve started that.

Now as you know we have already looked at a number of measures to try and cut the number of penalty charge notices, PCNs, that are being issued at those yellow boxes. For example, and let’s look at the Bagley’s Lane one and its junction with New King’s Road yellow box junction. The number of PCNs issued have fallen.

Back in 2012 PCNs stood at 35,100 a year. This has now come down - last year, including the end of the year when Harwood Terrace was closed, it’s down to 16,200.

92% of the people who have been issued PCNs are issued at that junction during the experimental period come to people who did not live in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. So that goes to make the point that people from outside the area have been using Harwood Terrace as a cut-through and we’ve had PCNs issued as far away as Peterborough, Oxford and such like.

We are liaising with TfL and we’re going to do everything possible to make sure that the only people issued with PCNs are those who continually breach highways laws.”

Supplementary question

“Will you open Harwood Terrace and do a far wider review of the whole area so that we can get an outcome that works for everyone across the borough?”

Answer to the supplementary question

“Thank you. It was interesting, those of you who were here earlier this evening will have heard the discussion about the Freedom of the Borough, when Michael Mansfield made his comment about defending the little guy. Now you’ve talked about 2000 people, 2000 names against however many it is who live in Harwood Terrace - they are the little guy who have been suffering for years.

I think it is important for the safety of people, and for the wellbeing of people that live in that street - that somebody actually listens to them. I’m not diminishing the points that you’re making, or the issues that other people have had with the traffic and such like, but somebody had to look after the small guy as well. And therefore, as I’ve said earlier, we will look at the wider area. I’ve got officers going and looking at the traffic that’s going through all the other streets, seeing how people have diverted their routes, see what mitigations have to be done on that and start looking at a system for the wider area.”