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Suing the council to get them to do this right may sound like a neat solution but it is probably impractical.The people who suffer loss of income are not going to be bankers, lawyers or civil servants because they wouldn't be out of bed at this time on a Sunday morning. The highest paid person losing out would probably be a emergency plumber and even their lost income wouldn't cover the cost of hiring a solicitor. Taking the council to the small claims court might be viable for some but then you face the problem of winning the case. The council have in-house representation and they will probably make an argument that putting an ad in a newspaper that nobody reads fulfils their legal duty.Theoretically the significant number of people who are likely to be affected by this could get together, hire a good lawyer and dismantle the council's arguments but that would require a lot of organisation and seems like an unlikely scenario.The hard truth is that the council know they don't need to worry about consequences and the way they handle these things is probably not down to ineptitude. They seem to have bought into the idea that driving a motor vehicle is inherently an evil thing to do and therefore a traffic jam on a Sunday morning is a useful way of making people see the error of their ways. Sure, it might cause financial loss for people on low incomes and a spike in pollution but this will demonstrate to people that they need to switch to more sustainable modes of transport.

Francis Rowe ● 2227d

Hi Philipa,There are more people commuting now then there were when lockdown started getting eased, I presume as people feel more confident about using the tube and buses. The impression I get is that the footfall on TGT has fallen since these measures have been introduced and enforced, which is ironic since in part the measures were meant to aid increased space for pedestrians to accomodate the footfall 'safely'. A cynic may say the measures have improved the ability to 'social distance'on TGT.Maybe footfall is starting to slowly increasing again, but in the meantime some of the traders say they are suffering. Some of the comments I've read from car drivers on this forum frustrate me, those that say they couldn't possibly go shopping in chiswick now because a limited number of parking places are now inaccesible to them - there are plenty of parking spaces within a relatively short walk e.g. on South Parade, in the Glebe Street CPZ etc. but there are quite probably people who would stop in TGT to shop there, maybe on their way back from or to somewhere else (possibly another shop, friends, trip out etc.) and that has now gone.I agree there is plenty of shopping that doesn't need a car, some people are 'married' to their cars, but there is a significant proportion of previous shoppers in TGT who now probably won't frequent it as often if at all, because the ease of making an impulse stop has stopped, and there doesn't as it stands appear to be any significant benefit.I make these comments having looked at TGT in recent weeks, being fairly pro-cycling myself (in spite of not having a cycle at the moment mainly due to space and security concerns) and feeling pretty exasperated by the attitude of some car drivers on this forum that they should pretty much be allowed to go wherever they want, whenever they want, and have every single bit of road tarmac available to use, regardless of the impact on local residents living nearby.And I do more often than not walk to the shops in TGT and Chiswick from where I live (near Wendell Park).

Andrew Jones ● 2224d