London councils are having to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money repairing vandalised bollards and cameras designed to help improve air pollution and make roads safer.
Data obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act shows more than £850,000 worth of damage has been caused to low-traffic neighbourhood (LTN) infrastructure in the capital since 2020.
Vandals have cut cables, damaged cameras and pushed them to face the sky, smashed or removed bollards and painted over signs.
Hackney council had the biggest bill, paying almost £400,000 for repairs. Mete Coban, a Hackney councillor, said a small minority of people were responsible.
“The evidence shows our LTNs and ‘school streets’ work, with traffic down, more people walking and cycling and children benefiting from being able to walk safely to school,” he said.
“A small minority of people continue to vandalise enforcement cameras, wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds that could be better spent on freedom passes for older people, introducing more cycle parking and road safety classes in schools.”
Nicki Wedgwood, 29, a Hackney resident, said she saw huge general support for the LTN measures. “Only about 30% of people in Hackney own a car,” she said. “It’s such a great place to get around without one anyway; it’s one of the best things about living there.”
Although she sympathises with people who have not adjusted to the measures, she said she could not understand why a minority of people would ruin things for everybody else. “There’s no reason why you should feel entitled to continue causing air pollution, noise and traffic. [They are] making things dangerous for the vast majority of people who don’t have a car and just want to be able to enjoy their lives, which I think should be allowed for people who live in cities,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to move to the countryside to have peace and quiet and to feel safe.”
Wedgwood added: “I think it’s a real shame that people are vandalising this stuff and it’s causing a huge cost to the council, but if Hackney council stopped repairing it then you just let these people win, don’t you?”
Coban, the cabinet member for energy, waste, transport and public realm, said the council was working hard to catch those responsible. “In addition to working with the police to identify those responsible, we are also trialling new types of camera and equipment that stops the vandalism, as well as CCTV surveillance of sites where this is happening,” he said.
Lambeth incurred the second biggest bill, paying out £310,000 to fix vandalised LTN equipment.
LTNs aim to promote walking and cycling by filtering some local streets so vehicles can access them but cannot use them as cut-throughs.
While they have existed in various forms for decades, their expansion was heavily promoted during the Covid-19 pandemic by Boris Johnson’s government, which provided funding for councils to create new schemes.
LTNs do not impose any new costs on drivers and are primarily aimed at boosting active travel. Research and polling suggests they are generally effective and popular, but they have become a controversial political issue. Last month Rishi Sunak ordered a review of all LTNs and 20mph zones, saying he was “on the side of drivers”.
That announcement followed the Conservatives’ narrow win in last month’s Uxbridge byelection that was seemingly helped by opposition among voters to the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) by the city’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan.
Critics have accused Sunak of abandoning many critical environmental and climate policies – including support for LTNs – in an attempt to placate the right wing of his party and create “wedge issues” before the next general election.
Greenpeace said this government would “go down in history” as the administration that failed the UK on the climate crisis while ministers pursued a dangerous culture war.
As well as attacking the cameras and bollards used in LTNs, vandals have also targeted monitoring systems designed to record whether traffic reduces and cycling and walking rates go up, cutting cables and smashing monitoring equipment.
Coban said: “This suggests those responsible are not interested in the evidence about how these schemes are working.”
