Lime bikes left in Euston Road [Simon Lamrock]

THE regular row over poorly parked Lime bikes on pavements popped up again at last night’s (Monday’s) full council meeting but Camden’s new leader showed no signs of following neighbouring Brent’s tough talk for the operators.

Councillor Richard Olszewski, who took charge of the council in July was pressed on the issue by the three-member Conservative group, telling the meeting: “It’s important that we actually look beyond the easy headlines because the fact is that councils don’t actually have powers to ban them. We face many social problems and we really need to be a bit more sophisticated in asking to ‘ban this’ and ‘ban that’.

“The fact is technology is changing, society is changing, behaviour is changing. What we need is regulation and partnership with various operators so they are better.”

He added: “Many motorists make egregious breaches of the law, the regulations, often killing people and so on, but I don’t suppose we are going to ban cars because of that are we? It’s important to work with the providers and also on the behaviour of those who use them as well.” 

Conservatives in Camden have previously suggested that Lime and any other hire operators would take more interest in seeing that bikes and scooters were properly parked if they risked financial penalties for not quickly fixing blocked pavements or oversubscribed parking bays.

Environment chief Councillor Adam Harrison had said then that the control of hire cycles would soon be taken over by TfL rather than individual borough councils.

Over the summer, the Labour leadership in Brent said that Lime had until Halloween to address councillors’ safety concerns or parking bays would be removed across that borough. The warning led to national media coverage.

Conservative group leader Councillor Steve Adams had said to the Labour leader last night (Monday): “Brent  Council delivered a last chance message to Lime bikes on safety grounds where they had threatened Lime that a ban would be brought in if matters did not improve considerably.

“Wandsworth Council seemed to have grasped the nettle and promised to largely ban the parking of ebikes on pavements.

“Given these decisive actions and noting that the cabinet member for a sustainable Camden previously ducked a question on how Camden was going to place some control over these vehicles by predicting that TfL was to take over their licensing might it not be that some strong words behind the scenes will be had and this problem properly dealt with.”