At our request Merton Council installed traffic sensors throughout East Hillside and collected data from October 2024 – March 2025. The data proved incontrovertibly that East Hillside has a serious traffic problem:

• the Belvederes/Alan Road and Woodside experience very heavy volumes of through traffic which should be on the surrounding distributor roads – not on residential streets
• thousands of HGVs cut-through the area in flagrant disregard for the 7.5t weight restriction
• 15% of all traffic in Woodside exceeds the speed limit by more than 10 mph

Merton Council subsequently proposed a traffic scheme for the area, but which had significant flaws: traffic would be displaced from one residential street to another; the scheme almost entirely missed measures to tackle HGVs; local residents were seriously inconvenienced; there were no measures to tackle speeding. Moreover, the Council published almost no information about the scheme and undertook very limited consultation. In these circumstances it was unsurprising that many residents objected to the proposals leading to the scheme being abandoned in May 2025.

This whole episode was a huge disappointment and a significant waste of time and resources.

Our Campaign’s position remains unchanged. There is now hard evidence of the traffic issues experienced by the residents of East Hillside, and we fully intend to pursue a fair and effective solution.