Campaign group Better Streets for Kensington and Chelsea has lost its High Court challenge to the Royal Borough’s decision not to reinstate a cycle lane on Kensington High Street, SW8.
The group, which campaigns to make walking and cycling in the borough more attractive to cut down on car journeys, had been seeking a judicial review of the decision. It claimed that the council did not properly consult on the matter and made an irrational decision.
However, in a ruling handed down today, trial judge Mr Justice Lane, who heard the case in December, dismissed the case.
The council made headlines in December 2020 when it abandoned a pilot cycle lane on Kensington High Street after just six weeks of what should have been an 18-month trial. The campaign group started legal action the day after the lane was removed and the council said it would “revisit” the decision.
The campaign group resumed legal action after the council’s March 2021 decision not to go ahead with a reinstated lane.
At a hearing in December, barrister Jenny Wigley KC, for the campaign group, told the court that, according to data from Transport for London, the lane was a “highly important,” “strategic” and “much-needed” east-to-west route that would be used by 3,000 cyclists a day.
The decision not to reinstate it was irrational because “the best way to assess whether or not something will work in the long-term is to give it a fair try”, Wigley said in court papers.
She also said that what she called the consultation process carried out by the council was “conspicuously unfair” and, when it took place, consultees had “no concrete or detailed proposals to respond to”.
The council’s lawyer, Charles Streeten, said in written arguments that the council was under no obligation to consult and had stated that publicly.
In his ruling, the judge agreed. He ruled that the council did not have a duty to consult and, while it had received and analysed many letters of support and complaint about the lane, that was not a consultation.
“Taking matters overall, I reject the submission of the claimants that, if and insofar as this was a ‘consultation’ it was not merely a consultation with some flaws but was clearly and radically wrong. It was nothing of the kind,” he said.
As for the “irrational” decision not to reinstate the lane, the council had decided to “develop plans to commission research into transport patterns in the post-Covid world”.
This “was not, according to the claimants, a rational substitute for monitoring and evaluating a temporary cycle lane that was in situ.”
However, the judge said he agreed with the council’s lawyer, who argued that this was not a “paradoxical” argument.
“It is paradoxical for the claimants, on the one hand, to say that the defendant did not have sufficient information to reach a decision and, on the other, to contend that the defendant’s decision to conduct further research before determining what, if any, cycle lane provision there should be on Kensington High Street, was irrational,” the judge said.
“The application for judicial review is dismissed.”
R (on the application of Better Streets for Kensington and Chelsea another) v Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Administrative Court (Lane J) 14 March 2023
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