Harrogate District Cycle Action (HDCA) has made a formal complaint to North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) about NYCC’s removal of the Beech Grove and Lancaster Road modal filters in August 2022.
The active travel scheme was put in place in February 2021 under an Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (ETRO), and lasted 18 months.
Under updated Network Management Duty (NMD) guidance:
- councils are expected to reallocate space to active travel; this was the only reallocation of space in North Yorkshire
- the assumption is that schemes will be retained unless there is substantial evidence to the contrary
- councils should devise further schemes
- councils should make adjustments to ETRO schemes during the period of the experiment
- councils should retain ETRO schemes, not remove them, unless there is substantial published evidence to support this
- councils should build a robust evidence base
- consultation and community engagement should always be undertaken whenever authorities propose to remove, modify or reduce existing schemes
In breach of the NMD guidance NYCC:
- has reallocated no space to active travel
- removed the scheme without collating and publishing the results of the consultation and traffic counts, and therefore without any evidence
- did not make any adjustments to the ETRO scheme (e.g. to the Otley Road/Victoria Road junction and the Beech Grove/West Park/Victoria Avenue junction)
- did not publish an evidence report
- did not undertake consultation or community engagement before removing the scheme
Beech Grove Complaint