Save Our Safer Streets has sent a "pre-action protocol letter" to Tower Hamlets Council. This starts the formal process which could result in a Judicial Review (where a judge reviews the lawfulness of a decision made by a public body).

We have taken this step because, having taken advice from our specialist legal team, we believe that Lutfur Rahman’s decision on 20 September 2023 to remove all the low traffic neighbourhoods in Bethnal Green was based on a process which was flawed.

This is not a position any of us want to be in, but we are doing what we can to use the legal system in order to challenge a decision which will put our community’s health and safety at risk.

We have a top legal team, led by David Wolfe KC, which gives us the best possible chance to succeed.

We will decide in November 2023 if we are submitting a claim to the High Court for Judicial Review.

We will need £5,000 more in donations in order to submit that claim, so depending on how the Council responds to our letter, we may ask our community and others to help us raise this money before the end of 2023.

Costs would then go up a lot in 2024 if the claim is accepted and goes to a hearing at the High Court. We would need roughly £45,000 more.

We will fundraise in manageable stages and we will be building on a strong platform, with more than £30,000 already donated by nearly 500 people.

We know all the effort we've put in so far is worth it, but all extra input and support that people can give will make a massive difference as we enter a new phase. 

The way things are looking, we aren’t at the end or even the beginning of the end of the campaign. We’re at the end of the beginning. 

Please join us to Save Our Safer Streets.

Over £10,000 has been donated by nearly 250 people in less than a week since Lutfur Rahman (mayor of Tower Hamlets) took the decision on 20th September 2023 to remove all the safer street infrastructure in Bethnal Green. In addition to the £17,500 we raised in 2022, this means our current total is £28,000, received from more than 400 people. Thank you to supporters both old and new for helping us to hold the council to account on this important issue.

The decision taken at cabinet was so reckless and extreme that it attracted a lot of press coverage and people may be donating to this crowd funder without a full understanding of what is going on, how we got to this point or where this goes next. That’s understandable. It’s complicated!

This update summarises the key points. If you have further questions, please email [email protected] and we’ll be back in touch soon. 

How it started

This crowd funder started in September 2022, because that was when we initially expected the council to rush through its decision after a short and inadequate consultation in summer 2022. We needed to be prepared for a legal challenge to commence immediately.

We appointed leading environmental lawyers, Leigh Day, as our solicitors to advise us on legal strategy and have been working with barristers who are also specialists in this field and whom they instruct on our behalf.

Funds received from this crowdfunder (minus CrowdJustice fees) go directly to them to pay their fees, as well as those of the barristers. CrowdJustice is a dedicated crowdfunding platform for legal challenges, so all backers can be assured that funds are managed responsibly. See the CrowdJustice FAQ for more info.

We raised £17,500 in September 2022 and then paused active fundraising because the council delayed making a decision about Liveable Streets at that time.

Part of the reason the council delayed their decision is because we worked with our lawyers to look at the first consultation from summer 2022. Together, we identified a number of significant flaws in the process and sent a letter to the council as a prelude to a possible legal challenge. We believe these actions forced the council to rethink their rushed and sloppy approach and this directly led to the second consultation in January 2023.

Our ongoing legal work

In the background over the past year, we have been continuing to assess the legalities of the approach being taken by the council. Between September 2022 and September 2023, Leigh Day has sent numerous letters to the legal team at Tower Hamlets Council, covering issues such as the potential grounds for a legal challenge in September 2022, concerns with the consultation process in February 2023 and a letter outlining some of the most obvious flaws in the Officer Report which was used as the basis for the 20 September 2023 decision. Since September 2022, our legal strategy has been grounded in advice from experienced barristers and we now have just added a King’s Counsel to assist our legal team as we prepare for the next post-decision stage.

The finances

As of 25 September 2023, we have spent or committed to spend £16,000 of the £28,000 raised so far. This includes Leigh Day fees, two rounds of barrister advice, expert assessments of the Officer Report and transcription services. At this point we effectively have £12,000 remaining (minus CrowdJustice fees) which is ready to be spent on future expenses. 

The exact amount required ongoing for the next stages of our legal challenge will depend on the strategy settled on and how quickly there is success or otherwise. However, the original information we shared when we started this crowdfunder gives a sense of the amount of funds needed, if there is a judicial review. We would need approximately:

• £21,000 in legal fees for the submission to the High Court      

• £18,000 in legal fees in preparation for and undertaking court hearing

• £11,000 in liability for legal costs of the council and court fees

What happens now?

Our lawyers are reviewing all the evidence and documents that are connected with last week’s decision to determine the best legal approach. They will then provide advice, which will include more up-to-date estimates of expected legal fees ongoing. We will keep posting regular public updates about the legal campaign on our CrowdJustice page and will keep our current donors informed too. 

Due to the confidential nature of the legal advice, we will obviously need to keep our public updates “zoomed out”. There will likely be set-piece moments in the campaign where we are able to share much more detail but we will be keeping supporters as informed as is possible as things progress without compromising any legal cases    .

And finally

In conclusion, we are already in a solid position in terms of our legal support team. We have confidence that our legal strategy is going to be as robust as it can be with expert lawyers who know the details of this case from the beginning. We will continue to be as transparent as possible about our activities. 

We believe this will be a long and drawn-out fight. It will inevitably cost more money than we have so far raised if we are to succeed in this legal case. This might seem like a very local issue, only affecting people in part of Bethnal Green, and not even the rest of Tower Hamlets, let alone more widely. However, decisions such as this contribute to the wider political mood. If unchallenged, they could set a precedent for more backsliding on safe and healthy streets. We therefore need as many people as possible who care about this issue in Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets, London, England, the UK, Europe or the world to donate to our cause and to spread the message: Save Our Safer Streets! 

If you would like to know what the Save Our Safer Streets campaign is up to more broadly, then please go to the website where there is a news section and an option to sign up for the newsletter.

Lutfur Rahman has taken the most extreme, undemocratic and dangerous decision available to him this evening. He has decided to rip out all the walking and cycling infrastructure in Bethnal Green. 

This is not the end. We know we have public support for our cause and the overwhelming evidence too. 

With the advice of our lawyers, we will monitor the legality of what the council has done. Our Crowd Justice page is open for donations. The more we receive, the more ready we are to act as necessary to protect our safer streets.

Papers published ahead of a decision next week (20 Sept) on the future of the Liveable Streets scheme have revealed that 58% of local residents want to keep the new road layouts in place. The latest council report also shows that air quality has improved both within the scheme and on boundary roads.

The cabinet papers make public the results of a consultation carried out in February - the second in less than a year. Both consultations have found that residents support the status quo. The more detailed 2019 consultation that inspired the scheme also reported strong resident support for the Liveable Streets schemes. However, the 2021 Aspire manifesto committed to reversing them.

Mayor Lutfur Rahman and his Cabinet will decide on the future of the schemes next Wednesday. Alongside the two options offered to residents in the 2022 and 2023 consultations – Option 1 to reverse the schemes or Option 2 to keep them – the papers also include a new option which has been developed by the council behind closed doors.

Under option 3, over 80% of the scheme removals proposed by Option 1 would still be carried out, at an estimated cost of £1.2m which is not currently in the council budget. Bart’s Hospital, the Metropolitan Police, Transport for London, local schools and 90% of businesses have all supported Option 2 (keeping the schemes as they are), given the improvements to health, safety and reductions in anti-social behaviour.

If the council decided to remove the schemes, it would be the first in the country to do so against the will of residents.

Rob Andari from Save Our Safer Streets said: “Residents have repeatedly rejected Option 1. It’s pretty safe to assume they wouldn’t welcome a decision that delivers 81% of the outcome they didn’t want, under this new, unconsulted third Option 3.

“Lutfur Rahman promised to be a ‘listening Mayor’ - here is his chance to come good on that promise. At least 58% of residents have said they want to keep the current street designs and save the council more than a million pounds.

“We would love the council to spend that money on things Tower Hamlets residents really need, like better housing, more funding for schools and more help during the cost of living crisis. It would be an insult to residents to ignore what they’ve said a third time and to spend their money making the air dirtier and making cycling and walking more dangerous at a time when people need cheap forms of transport more than ever.

“Last year, more than 3,000 local people signed a petition calling on the council to stop, listen and improve its plans. They haven’t stopped, they aren’t listening and they have proposed no improvements to what we already have today.”

With the advice of our lawyers, we continue to monitor the legality of what the council is doing. We need to be ready to act to protect our safer streets.

Our open letter to the Mayor of Tower Hamlets asking him to “keep and improve” new street layouts in Bethnal Green and Brick Lane has been signed by 934 local residents, businesses and stakeholders in just seven days.

As our stakeholder response to the second consultation, the letter highlights strong evidence for the benefits of the schemes and points out the financial and human costs of removing them.

Signatories to the letter include nearly 60 business owners and managers, five headteachers and 32 teachers from local schools, 18 medical staff and GPs (including the Chair of Tower Hamlets Local Medical Committee), Respiratory Doctors and Paediatricians from the Royal London Hospital and Bart’s Health and one social care provider - many of the most important stakeholders for the health, wellbeing and economy of the area.

The fact that nearly 1,000 people have signed our letter within a week shows that local people are crying out for a sensible way forward. If the Mayor genuinely wants to make Tower Hamlets a healthy, happy and prosperous borough, then he should listen to what we have been saying since last summer; stop his race to reopen the roads, and work with the community on ways to improve the street layouts for all.

With the advice of our lawyers, we continue to monitor what the council is doing, in preparation for what may become a claim for judicial review of the decision or consultation process.

Click to read the full letter.

We at Save Our Safer Streets have been campaigning hard to stop Tower Hamlets Council from “reopening the roads” for months now. Our efforts have redoubled in the past few weeks due to the council announcing another consultation to rip out low traffic measures. 

As with summer 2022, Tower Hamlets Council are threatening to reintroduce heavy traffic and pollution into residential areas with multiple schools, by ripping out pedestrian-friendly areas, green spaces, and active travel infrastructure. Right now, our focus is on spreading the word about these dangerous plans and campaigning right up until the Bethnal Green and Weavers consultations close on 12th February and the Brick Lane consultation closes on 19th February. 

Our legal team will be ready to respond if the council makes a decision we believe is unlawful. If we are advised that a judicial review is the right next step, we will need to keep crowd-funding to meet the increased legal costs, and we’ll be relying on more public support. We’ve been blown away by how the community has come together to get us this far, so we know we can do it if it comes to that.

We will share further details as soon as we know more. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about what the campaign has been up to recently, check out our website (http://heartbg.uk) and follow us on social media. You can find us on Twitter at @SaveOldBGR and on Instagram at  @sossbethnalgreen.

Thank you again for your continued support and generosity.

Save Our Safer Streets in Tower Hamlets

We at Save Our Safer Streets have been campaigning hard to stop Tower Hamlets Council from “reopening the roads”. Most recently, our petition asking the council to slow down and listen to community voices, experts, and data reached a record-breaking 3094 signatures. This success triggered a debate at a council meeting where our petitioners presented the case for keeping and improving the new street layouts. However, we are still waiting for more information from the council about its ongoing decision process. We don’t yet know their plans, but we do know that their timetable leading up to a decision has slowed down.

When the council does make a decision, our legal team will be ready to respond. If we are advised that a judicial review is the right next step, we will need to keep crowd-funding to meet the increased legal costs, and we’ll be relying on your support. We’ve been blown away by how the community has come together to get us this far, so we know we can count on you.

We will share further details as soon as we know more. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about what the campaign has been up to recently, check out our website and follow us on social media. You can find us on Twitter at @SaveOldBGR and on Instagram at  @sossbethnalgreen.

Thank you again for your continued support and generosity.

Save Our Safer Streets in Tower Hamlets

First, we want to thank you for your continued support and interest in this campaign. Thanks to over 200 donors, we have raised £17,000 in just under a month. 

We also wanted to let you know that yesterday, on 28 September, Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman made a statement about the future of Liveable Streets. We were pleased to hear some positive new information, such as a commitment to ‘grasp all the issues affecting our residents on both sides of the debate’. However, we were disappointed to hear him repeat many unproven claims about the impacts of the new street layouts. It’s frustrating that he didn’t share the results of the recent consultation either, six weeks after it finished, or give any detail about the ongoing timetable.

Our petition, signed by over 3,000 locals, asked him to take the time to listen. He says that he will, and we hope this means he will truly take all views on board. 

On 5 October, we will present our petition before a council debate. We will be asking the council to publish evidence about the impact of street layout changes and release the results of the consultation. We are calling on them to allow time for a thorough process that looks at any specific issues that need to be addressed, with specific solutions, before reaching any decision.

You can read our statement in full on our website.

We will update this page again when we know about the next steps in our legal challenge, in light of what the council does next.

Save Our Safer Streets in Tower Hamlets Coalition

We are blown away by the support our community has shown us in the past two weeks, and we want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has donated so far. 

It is a huge relief to have met our initial target in such a short time as it means that our preliminary legal costs are covered as well as the claimant’s personal exposure to Tower Hamlets Council and court costs. 

However, we can’t give up just yet! Your donations are still needed to cover our ongoing costs to prepare our claim for Judicial Review. We will know more details about our push on to £35,000 later this month when the council makes its decision on “reopening the roads”.

Check back here for updates on the campaign as we proceed, and don’t forget to keep sharing the word on social media - you can find us on Twitter at @SaveOldBGR and Instagram at @sossbethnalgreen.

Thank you, and let's keep going!

Save Our Safer Streets in Tower Hamlets Coalition

This is such an encouraging step forward for community, safety, active travel and the environment. 

We've had a fantastic start, but we need to keep pushing. Tower Hamlets Council will make a decision on 28 September and already have "reopening the roads" in their plans for October.

Massive thanks to all who have already helped us reach almost £11k. That's 70% of our initial target secured by the end of the first day our CrowdJustice appeal went public. This shows how strongly people feel about our safer, healthier, friendlier streets and the need for due process when deciding their future. 

Now we need to keep working towards £15k and beyond. We still hope a legal process won't be needed and that Tower Hamlets Council will talk to us about possible improvements to the street layouts instead of bulldozing them. But if they won't, our legal challenge will be ready. 

We don't want to see such vital steps towards tackling the climate crisis rolled back, and we want other boroughs to see that local communities will fight for this progress. If, like us, you care about tackling pollution in our cities, keeping our streets safe for children and older people, and due process in local government, please help us to spread the word.