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Re: Lib Dems Accuse Ealing Council of Giving e-bike Companies a Free Ride

As a resident of Chiswick W4 who actually voted for the Liberal Democrats at the last council election, I believe it is vital that we strip away the superficial political theater and look at the hard legislative facts of this e-bike network crisis.While it is easy for the Liberal Democrats to hunt for cheap headlines by accusing the current administration of giving companies a "free ride," their public demands reveal a profound lack of due diligence regarding how highways legislation actually functions.The uncomfortable truth is that if the Liberal Democrats were running Ealing Council today, they would be trapped in the exact same operational deadlock.Until the very recent shift toward physical impounding, individual borough councils have been forced to try and police high-tech, fluid dockless fleets using Section 137 of the Highways Act 1980 (Wilful Obstruction). Under strict UK contract and highways law, an officer cannot simply photograph a bike and hand down an instantaneous fine. Section 137 requires the council to prove continuous, wilful intent.To make an FPN legally airtight under current guidelines, an evidence log must show that the exact same bike has been causing an obstruction for a minimum of a two-hour window, verified by matching photos taken at either side of that timeline. While the council suggests the public can do this via reporting apps like Love Clean Streets, this is a total practical non-starter. Expecting residents to act as unpaid detectives—returning to a coordinate two hours later to take a second photo—is an administrative illusion. Even if a resident does it, such uncalibrated citizen metadata would easily be torn to shreds by corporate legal teams in a civil appeals court.Demanding aggressive "enforcement action" under an archaic 1980 framework that treats corporate fleets like individual littering offenses is a logistical dead end. This unworkable evidence trap is the sole reason why boroughs across London have experienced a very high enforcement failure rate regarding individual penalty notices.While some proactive authorities like Hammersmith & Fulham have successfully bypassed this by deploying dedicated teams to physically seize and impound hundreds of dumped assets directly, relying on a reactive, bike-by-bike street clear-up does nothing to fix the systemic breakdown.Instead of weaponizing a broken administrative loop to score local political points, our representatives should be engaging with the actual structural engineering required to fix our streets. The passage of The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 has fundamentally rewritten the rules.Transport for London (TfL) and the Department for Transport (DfT) are actively drafting the secondary legislation right now to implement a single, pan-London licensing regime, which is expected to go live on the ground by summer 2027. The legal power over micromobility networks is officially shifting away from fragmented individual borough councils and landing squarely under a single regional authority.Crucially, this landmark 2026 Act goes far beyond parking controls; it is a total constitutional reset for London's infrastructure. By granting the Mayoral Strategic Authority enhanced powers of intervention, TfL will finally possess the legislative teeth to override local borough vetoes and construct the long-delayed cycle lane on Kensington High Street.By permanently linking Cycleway 9 (C9) with Cycleway 3 (C3), commuters will finally see a completed, continuous cycle route running seamlessly all the way from Brentford in the west to Barking in the east.Borough-level MoUs, border geofence lockouts, and localized vetoes are a failed, fragmented model. To deliver a safe public realm for pedestrians and an efficient network for cyclists, we must stop using transport safety as a local political football and support a centralized, unified transport architecture managed directly by City Hall.

Hans Lund-Sorensen ● 7d16 Comments

Sorry, you are have posted misinformation here.  The  English Devolution and Community does not allow TfL to build cycle lanes on a borough road without the permission of the borough. The legislation will enable a pan London arrangement for hire bikes but boroughs have the choice if they opt into this or not. The borough won't be permitted to do their own arrangements with hire bike providers so it will either be the pan London scheme or no hire bikes in the borough.  Just like the roads, TfL can't force a borough to join the pan London scheme and I am pretty sure that some boroughs will continue to not allow any hire bikes, just as some don't allow them now.

Michael Robinson ● 7d

So do you believe the new seizure powers will be effective?Why don't you think spot impounding of bikes works - there are only a handful of locations where obstructive e-bike parking takes place regularly. The providers would soon take action if they were regularly having to retrieve their machines. Wouldn't it be legal to charge an impound fee to cover costs?

Francis Rowe ● 3d

Francis, looking at this as a minor problem confined to a "handful of locations" completely misjudges the sheer scale of modern transport logistics. There are currently over 50,000 active dockless hire bikes across London. In Ealing alone, the official fleet limit stands at 1,800 assets, which now account for an extraordinary 25% of all cycling journeys across the borough. When an infrastructure system commands a quarter of a metropolitan area's transit modal share, managing it via reactive, vehicle-by-vehicle "spot impounding" is a mathematical impossibility. While it is entirely legal under Section 149 of the Highways Act 1980 for a council to impound an obstructive asset and charge an operator a cost-recovery fee to retrieve it, this crude method completely fails to alter corporate or user behavior. We are trying to solve a high-volume, twenty-first-century transit problem using a forty-six-year-old law that was drafted decades before GPS, smartphone apps, and venture-backed dockless fleets even existed. It is simply not fit for purpose in 2026.To a multi-billion-pound, venture-backed technology provider, an occasional council impound fee is not a deterrent. It is simply written off as an insignificant corporate line item—a basic cost of doing business to maintain market share. It is vastly cheaper for an operator to absorb sporadic storage invoices than it is to fund permanent on-the-ground crews to police the entire network. Furthermore, a reactive towing regime is a massive drain on depleted council resources. For every single bike a council van manually collects, tags, and drives to a secure storage yard, dozens more are being left on pavements elsewhere by arriving commuters. It is a perpetual, losing game of administrative Whac-A-Mole. The new physical seizure powers are a political sticking plaster designed to buy time, not a systemic cure. If we want absolute order on our streets, we must move past reactive clear-ups entirely. The long-term solution lies in the upcoming statutory framework enabled by the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026. Once secondary legislation goes live, Transport for London (TfL) will take over as the sole regional licensing authority. Only a centralized, pan-London licensing regime can enforce the uniform operating rules, systemic data sharing, and corporate accountability required to control these commercial fleets across borough boundaries.Let's stop trying to treat a major public utility like a local littering offense and start supporting centralized, statutory regulation that holds operators accountable before a bike ever blocks the pavement.

Hans Lund-Sorensen ● 3d

While you are probably right that spot seizures might not be effective immediately they would at least show intent from the council. It is the case that there are only a small number of locations in the borough where this problem is endemic — mainly around transport hubs and on local authority borders. Seizing bikes would build up data for both the council and the provider about exactly where the problem is and financial penalties could maybe be built into future contracts. Hopefully you are not wrong that a centralised system will solve these problems although I'm not totally clear why you are so confident but until then, even ineffective measures will demonstrate that it is acknowledged there is an issue.

Francis Rowe ● 2d

I believe for the proposed 'pan London' agreement, the hire bike companies will pay TfL as the licensing authority for the right to operate in London then TfL will distribute money to the boroughs.Boroughs that sign-up to the agreement will be required to allocate dedicated bays for hire bikes and the funding they receive from TfL will be based upon a forumula including the number of bays in the borough and the actual usage of bikes.I don't know what the process will be for dealing with errant bikes that aren't in bays.  I assume that the hire bike licensing agreement will have requirements for the hire bike operator but as to what happens if they don't meet these, no idea yet.

Michael Robinson ● 2d

Hans is absolutely spot on. Francis, I think you need to get out more and see just how endemic this problem is. Whac-A-Mole is an apt description. Or digging out of quick sand.Hans is also right about penalties not making a difference to behemoth organizations with deep pockets. Councils should aggressively attempt to collect from said pockets while also being more draconian in exacting penalties. Simply ban the supplier. The remaining suppliers will easily jump in to fill any void (and then some) and the deterrent will be obvious to other suppliers should they think they have carte blanche on the streets and pavements.

David Lesniak ● 2d

Francis, my confidence in a centralised system isn't based on blind optimism; it is based on basic systems engineering. The reason standard geofencing and manual council towing fail is because they are entirely reactive. They try to fix a layout error after a human being has already abandoned a 39kg vehicle on the pavement. Michael is entirely right that the upcoming pan-London agreement will distribute funds based on dedicated bays—but if those bays are just painted squares on the tarmac, the Whac-A-Mole game continues indefinitely.To make regulation work, the street furniture itself must act as the absolute physical boundary. If Transport for London (TfL) owns the fixed roadway infrastructure and dictates a universal hardware and docking specification, the digital trip-end loop is completely solved. The software app layer simply refuses to stop billing the commuter's credit card until the vehicle is physically locked into the centralized docking rail. Physics does 100% of the enforcement work before a bike can ever block a footway.David is spot on regarding the deterrent effect—but we don't need slow, bureaucratic borough bans to achieve it. If TfL holds the keys to the master application layer, they can use an instantaneous digital switch to temporarily freeze a non-compliant operator out of the London transit map. When an operator faces losing their entire capital market share to a rival within a single second, they will keep their maintenance pristine, their balancing rotas perfect, and their users heavily penalized out of pure commercial self-preservation. The tool is arriving with the Devolution Act. The only question left is whether City Hall will have the engineering foresight to implement a proactive infrastructure layer, or if they will keep trying to clear pavements with a towing manual from 1980.

Hans Lund-Sorensen ● 2d

"If Transport for London (TfL) owns the fixed roadway infrastructure..."They don't. TfL is the Highway Authority for the defined strategic road network in London which comprises roads like the A4, N Circular, S Circular etc.The remaining 95% of the roads are the responsibility of the boroughs.  When it comes to bays for hire bikes, the boroughs decide where the bays go, if they are on the road, if they are on the pavement or if the borough isn't participating in the hire bike scheme and there are no bays at all.Your references to "universal hardware and docking specification" and "If TfL holds the keys to the master application layer" is just pie in the sky fantasy.

Michael Robinson ● 2d

Michael, reciting the standard 1999 Greater London Authority Act division of highways authority powers isn’t a counter-argument; it is simply describing the exact fragmented baseline that the new legislation was explicitly passed to replace. No one is wishing away the boroughs or suggesting that TfL is going to physically seize ownership of Ealing or Hounslow’s local asphalt. You are confusing physical road maintenance with statutory market licensing control. The conversation on this forum needs to move past treating shared micromobility as a permanent local nuisance, and understand how it can be molded into a disciplined part of London's core infrastructure. Right now, tech providers treat our streets as a short-term cash cow, while residents react with understandable fury at the resulting dockless chaos. But if we turn the clock, we can capture this private commercial energy to the absolute benefit of London's transit network. Shared e-bikes already account for a massive 25% of all cycling journeys in Ealing—they are a vital, zero-emission last-mile connector to our rail hubs that cannot simply be banned.The passage of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 is the exact legislative mechanism that lets us achieve this. Under the secondary legislation currently being drafted by the Department for Transport and City Hall for 2027, TfL is being established as the sole, centralized regional licensing authority for micromobility networks across the capital. Once that centralized operating license framework goes live, individual borough councils no longer operate in isolated silos. TfL doesn't need to own the physical pavement under a shelter to dictate a universal hardware and docking specification; they own the exclusive legal right to grant an operator a permit to turn a wheel anywhere in Greater London. If TfL mandates that access to their consolidated regional user market requires operators to interface with a standardized, unified docking infrastructure specification, the operators will comply out of pure commercial survival. TfL holds the keys to the master application layer API—meaning they possess the absolute digital handbrake to temporarily freeze a non-compliant provider out of the entire London transit network map within a single second.What you are calling "pie in the sky fantasy" is standard utility concession engineering. It is exactly how the city regulates London Buses and London Cabs. Arriva and Stagecoach own the buses, and the borough councils own the high streets, but TfL dictates the absolute, un-negotiable vehicle specifications, timetables, and unified ticketing architecture because they control the central statutory license. By upgrading our mindset from dockless chaos to a structured, centralized utility model, we turn a corporate money scheme into a permanent public asset that keeps our pavements clear for pedestrians. The era of thirty-three separate borough councils trying to manage multi-billion-pound tech fleets with voluntary handshakes and forty-six-year-old towing codes is officially drawing to a close. It is time to look past the 1999 playbook and engage with the actual regional infrastructure engineering heading our way in 2027.

Hans Lund-Sorensen ● 2d

A lot of words but still pie in the sky fantasy.The pan-London agreement will have a legal framework for management of hire bikes but TfL simply won't be developing and imposing all the tech you think.There won't be additional hardware that needs to be installed at every bike bay.  "master application API" is pure, fantasy as if TfL can impose how the dockless bike companies architect their systems then control them.

Michael Robinson ● 2d

Michael, asserting that a master application API is "pure fantasy" simply reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern digital infrastructure operates. Every single major technology provider on earth—including Lime, Forest, Bolt, and Voi—already structures their entire business model around application programming interfaces (APIs). They cannot operate without them. When an operator integrates their bikes into the Google Maps app or the Uber app so users can locate and hire their vehicles, they are doing so by matching their software architecture precisely to a mandatory, third-party API specification. Under the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, Transport for London (TfL) is not "imposing how private companies architect their internal systems." TfL is simply acting as the statutory gatekeeper of the London market. TfL has the absolute regulatory right to state: "If you want a license to broadcast your vehicles within our geographic boundaries, your data feed must plug into the unified TfL transit API, and your software must instantly respect our centralized perimeter lockouts and user accountability registers." This is basic, everyday data governance, not science fiction.Regarding the hardware, the current approach of relying on cheap paint and hoping for the best is exactly what has created the chaotic, multi-million-pound pavement obstruction crisis we see today. If the public sector lacks the engineering foresight to implement physical, standardized roadway docking rails, the system will remain broken. The structural tools are arriving in 2027. We can either choose to look forward and demand an industrial-grade, self-enforcing transit utility that protects pedestrians, or we can stay stuck in the 1999 mindset, assuming the chaos on our pavements is completely impossible to fix.

Hans Lund-Sorensen ● 2d

I know very well how modern digital infrastructure works and about discussions which have already happened between TfL and boroughs which is why I know that you are fantasising about what TfL will do.

Michael Robinson ● 2d

Michael Robinson = Ipse Dixit

Steve Taylor ● 2d

When Michael attacks and repeats ad nauseum it's him being scared. Threatened for some reason. He's always been myopic.What I find ironic is that Hans, a cyclist I believe, is completely correct in everything he says which will only lay the necessary groundwork for this nascent infrastructure to thrive. And yet Michael does his kicking and screaming routine oblivious to the improvement needed and which Hans suggests. I don't know squat about APIs, etc., but it's clear to anyone with half a brain e-bikes are in their infancy and are now learning to toddle and walk and the boundaries and requirements need to evolve. If, as was reported recently, suppliers can enforce to withing 4cms, surely the tech exists to shut them all down until they are compliant. It will never be 100%, but deterrents are funny things and situations improve immeasurably when they are put in place. Shocking. As an example, if Forest got shut down (personally I think their users are the worst with parking) then other vendors would deliver more bikes to any area Forest was shut out of. It's simple economics. A competitor falters whatever the reason, others take up the market share. Survival of the fittest.  What has always been missing from these initiatives, including the cycle lanes, is how TfL and the Mayor have missed the boat again and again by ignoring the concept that this is all new infrastructure and needs to act as such. Akin to tubes and buses. Haphazard, piecemeal and inconsistent does not spell success for a city of people looking to commute.

David Lesniak ● 1d

The mayor of London hasn’t done anything about prosecuting cyclists for terrorising pedestrians in Oxford Street. https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1UMpoqEBDB/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Steve Taylor ● 40m

"terrorising pedestrians""create and maintain a state of extreme fear and distress in (someone); fill with terror:"Did you watch the video? Obviously not.I was in an office on Oxford Street once and they made us stand behind the pillars of the windows and there was a van parked on the street loaded with semtex.Some perspective please.

Paul James ● 2m