Demo brings key roads to a halt

More than 200 campaigners brought two key routes into London to a standstill today in a protest against Ken Livingstone's congestion charging scheme.

Kennington Cross - at the junction of the A23 and the A3204 - and the nearby A3 in South London were paralysed for five minutes at the height of the rush hour as residents and traders demonstrated.

Backed by their MP Kate Hoey and Lambeth-council, the protesters said they hoped the roadblock would draw attention to the road pricing scheme that they claim will devastate their area.

The motorist at the head of the stationary queue of traffic on Kennington Road,

Julia Carr from Aldershot, said she did not mind being stopped and that she backed the action.

Protesters allowed traffic to continue after five minutes but said they would mount further protests if the congestion scheme was not redrawn or scrapped.

Kennington residents are furious that the charging scheme could make homes along the boundary of the zone drop in value. A flat examined by a leading chartered surveyor is expected to fall by 16 per cent, from £160,000 to £124,000, when the road in which it stands becomes part of the perimeter route encircling the scheme.

Houses on Kennington Lane will experience even sharper falls as traffic begins to pound the road, the report from chartered surveyor Cluttons warns. It says house values will drop by 20 per cent. Charging is expected to force thousands of extra vehicles onto the perimeter road as drivers divert away from the centre to avoid the £5-a-day charge.

According to an official report by chartered surveyor David MacLean-Watt, this will see the value of a typical two- or three-bedroom house on Kennington Lane fall from around £277,500 to just £222,000. He says there will be similar effects in other areas near the perimeter zone.

Mother-of-two Martha Macdonald said: "If it becomes a congestion charge route it will become virtually impossible to cross with children. There's going to be health risks and our property will be worth less."

Her husband Nigel Allgood said if the scheme came in he would have to pay £5 to go to the doctor's. "Mr Livingstone likes to think of himself as listening to the people. He seems to have turned a deaf ear," he said.

The report was commissioned by the Kennington Association which is fighting congestioncharging plans through a judicial review at the High Court.

In a High Court hearing last week, barristers for the Mayor's office applied to have the Cluttons report ruled inadmissable - on the grounds that it became part of the association's legal attack too late and was based on opinion not fact. However, the judge ruled that the association should be able to refer to the report in the next High Court hearing.

Transport for London said that if the Kennington Association used the Cluttons report as evidence it would produce its own evidence to refute the claims.