Legal challenge to Oxford’s LTNs withdrawn

A crowdfunded legal challenge to the Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in East Oxford and Cowley has been withdrawn after King’s Counsel advised it would “likely fail”.

The crowdfunder was launched by Reconnecting Oxford, a campaigner with an active Twitter/X account, in August 2022. It sought to “end road closures in Oxford” by raising £30,000 to mount a legal challenge “against the Council’s mass road closure programme”. The appeal took aim not just at LTNs, which close residential streets to through motor traffic while preserving access for pedestrians and cyclists, but also at the traffic filters that Oxfordshire County Council wants to trial in the city: “They [OCC] are determined to ruin the lives of anyone who needs to drive and make essential journeys by car or van in Oxford.”

Now, after raising £22,872 of the £30,000 target, the crowdfunder has been closed and the appeal halted. According to an update posted on GoFundMe in December, legal advice commissioned by the organisers concluded that the challenge would be unsuccessful:

“The bulk of the money was spent on a Judicial Review (JR) of the LTNs. A King's Counsel (KC) Solicitor was appointed by EORC Ltd. who reviewed the Council’s LTN documentation and also reviewed other LTN legal challenges in the UK, he found only minor errors and advised that a JR would likely fail and that the solution was to ‘change the Councillors’ and that no further work was justifiable.”

EORC Ltd is End Oxford Road Closures Ltd, a company set up with “community group leads” as directors. The biggest donors listed on GoFundMe are former cafe owner Clinton Pugh, who gave £3,000; the Oxford Collection hotel chain, which gave £1,000; an individual with the same name as a Headington business owner, who also gave £1,000; and “Tera N”, who gave £1,500.

Earlier this year, a challenge to a Low Traffic Neighbourhood scheme in Dulwich was partly upheld by the High Court, which agreed Lambeth Council had unlawfully failed to consider evidence submitted to it. One of three grounds of challenge was allowed while two were rejected.

Traffic filters legal challenge

The remaining funds from the Oxford LTN crowdfunder have now been transferred to a separate legal challenge to the traffic filters proposed for the city. This crowdfunder, which seeks to raise £200,000 from local residents and visitors, lists as co-organisers two employees of an Oxford hotel group with an annual turnover of £20m.

The co-organisers are named as ‘Oxford Business Action Group’, an unincorporated lobby group with no public membership list or committee details; Afroz Ahsan, who describes himself elsewhere as Head of Finance at the Oxford Collection; and Ben Thornton-Harwood, Marketing Manager at the Oxford Collection.

The Oxford Collection is Jeremy Mogford’s group of hotels and restaurants: the Old Bank, Old Parsonage, Quod, Gees, and Parsonage Grill. It describes itself as “an independently owned collection of two 5-star plus luxury hotels and three stunning restaurants, all in central Oxford”.

In 2023, the parent company Mogford Ltd had turnover of £19.7m and profit of £594,000. Mogford Ltd’s annual accounts listed several reasons for a fall in profits from 2022, none of them traffic-related:

“The Group had the challenging year we expected, due to the very difficult trading conditions that have affected all hospitality companies. High inflation, especially wage inflation, led to the increase in costs outstripping our ability to increase our revenues in line and this has resulted in a reduction in profits. […] The main issues that the Group faces are common to all hospitality businesses in the UK. High inflation, a severe labour shortage, increased regulation and over capacity results in a poor outlook for hospitality in the UK. However with Oxford being a unique attraction and with the location of the businesses in the city, the Group remains confident that the businesses will continue to be profitable.”

So far, the crowdfunder has raised £81,842. In an update posted in March, Oxford Collection marketing manager Ben Thornton-Harwood wrote that – with the actual implementation of the traffic filters still some way off – the campaign was now paying for “raising the profile of the opponents to the scheme”:

“We also want to support candidates in local elections who are opposed to the economic, cultural and social vandalism that the county council wish to impose on residents, employees and businesses of Oxford and its environs, as well as the many visitors who come here every year.”

The March update saw the crowdfunder’s previous £80,000 target raised to £200,000:

“We now feel the target has to be raised to £200,000 to cover any legal challenge, but also for publicity campaigns (including newspaper advertisements and leaflets), assisting anti-traffic filter candidates in the up-coming local elections, and organizing meetings and protests.”

The party most strongly opposed to traffic filters and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in May’s County Council elections was the Independent Oxford Alliance. The IOA says on its website that “Our funding comes from membership fees [and] donations (including crowdfunding)” (Clarion emphasis). The IOA won one seat at the elections: its councillor now sits in a joint group with the Conservative Party and one other independent.

Beyond this, however, the funding behind the anti-traffic filter campaign is opaque. The beneficiary of this crowdfunder is stated as ‘Stop Oxford's Traffic Filters’, which is not a listed organisation at Companies House or the Charity Commission.

Clarion investigation of the spending returns for 2024’s Oxford City Council elections showed that, for several candidates opposed to traffic filters, their declared expenditure significantly exceeded donations, with no explanation filed as to the discrepancy. Where income was listed, this was often described as “provided by the candidate to meet election expenses”.

With Oxfordshire County Council’s Cabinet due to consider an interim congestion charge scheme today, the time for the crowdfunder’s organisers to launch a legal challenge is coming nearer. The March update, writing about traffic filters, says “it is unlikely that the County Council will make the necessary experimental road traffic order [ETRO] until next year and only then will a challenge be possible”. Any ETRO for a congestion charge would likely be introduced after the Cabinet meeting in September.

Until then, the campaign says it will concentrate on shaping public opinion:

“In the meantime, we are concentrating on mounting a publicity campaign in order to inform the public of the dire consequences for the economic and cultural well-being of Oxford.”