We get some unusual queries here at Leisure Leagues head office.

Recently we had an unusual query asking for us to change one of our venues because a Council had just put in a bus only lane and it was difficult for players to get to their match on time.

We thought this was quite amusing until we had one of our head office staff get caught for going in a bus lane whilst trying to get to a league near Coventry to cover for a match night supervisor.

So, on behalf of the hundreds of people who have contacted us about the difficulty newly imposed bus lanes are creating when trying to get to one of your venues to play in a match, we thought we would look at this in a bit more detail.

The newly created bus lane was installed by Coventry City Council. We soon discovered that Coventry has just about the worst record in the country for making money from unsuspecting motorists by installing new bus lanes and failing to provide adequate signage.

A bit of investigation further by our media team made it clear that this wasn’t about road safety, giving buses an easier route, or getting people to a destination more quickly (or more slowly if you drive a car) This was a money making scheme devised by Coventry City Council, which the residents of Coventry had long been complaining about.

The plan was to install new bus lanes, then fail to provide proper signage, in the hope that the vast majority of people caught in a bus lane would simply pay up and not bother to appeal.

We weren’t just appealing for the member of staff who got caught. We felt we were appealing for many of our customers who told us how they had been caught in bus lanes near venues where our leagues are.

We checked out the Traffic Signs Manual (TSM), which is the definitive guide to signs you need to put up if you’re going to install a bus lane.

It makes quite a lot of recommendations: the signs need to be illuminated, or at least reflective. They need to be the correct height. And it’s much better if a motorist is given advance warning that they might be approaching a bus lane, particularly if the bus lane is at an oblique angle to the direction of travel.

All good reasons we thought, which we set out in video hearing with the Adjudicator, Edward Solomons.

The TSM, and indeed signage for bus lanes, didn’t appear to be Mr Solomons specialty. During the Hearing he scrabbled about asking where he could find this regulation or that regulation, and didn’t appear to have a good grasp of the situation.

And worse still, Mr. Solomons is not a man who is on the side of the motorist.

Yes, it’s recommended that some advance warning is given to a motorist, but it’s not actually necessary.

Yes, it does say the sign really should be illuminated but, well, just eat more carrots if it isn’t.

Yes the signage was a little bit too high, and not within the recommended limits, but that’s just a bit of a nuisance isn’t it?

Coventry City Council appeared flustered. Was the sign illuminated? Well, they didn’t really know and hadn’t checked.

Was the sign too high? Sorry, they didn’t know.

Does Coventry City Council have a policy simply of making money out of installing new bus lanes with inadequate signage? Well, we’d rather not answer that if you don’t mind (we’ll take that as a yes then).

Edward Solomons, with little to go on from the Council, needed to find a way to support the Authority against the beleaguered motorist. Normally, an Adjudicator makes a decision there and then. Mr. Solomons didn’t want to. He said he’d have to think about it and let us all know later on in an email.

And he did. No surprises though. Mr. Solomons explained that, yes, the sign probably wasn’t illuminated, probably wasn’t in the right place, and probably wasn’t at the right height, but anyway all those are imply recommendations, and not actually the law. (Not that Mr. Solomons gave any indication in our Hearing that he had even the faintest grasp of the law on bus lanes and bus gates).

What about giving the motorist advance warning of an approaching bus gate or lane? Well, the TSM said that a Council ‘should’ do that, but not that a Council ‘must’ do that. And although Mr. Solomons didn’t seen to know about that part of the TSM, his colleague Andrew Barfoot did, and shouldn’t every motorist know the difference in law between ‘should’ and ‘must’? So if you are a lawyer, you are ok, but if you are not, then tough luck.

Doubtless Edward Solomons had asked somebody else, or perhaps googled something, and decided, as he was always going to do, that the poor motorist was wrong, and the big powerful Authority was right. And that’s the end of it, thank you very much.

Makes you wonder if the ‘Independent Adjudicator’ really is ‘independent’. They must be we suppose, even though the small matter that they are paid from Councils just like Coventry is perhaps a minor inconvenience. But let’s not talk about that, shall we?

As a byline, we did point out during the Hearing itself to Mr. Solomons that we were happy to pay the fine on behalf of our staff member, but we were going through the appeal on behalf of thousands of other people, (including some of our customers) who perhaps don’t have money to pay these fines, improperly imposed by devious authorities like Coventry City Council on our unsuspecting customers, simply trying to find the best way to get to their league, and get fit. Mr Solomons, though was having none of it: I’m not interested in any political points, thank you very much, he said.

We bet he isn’t. All a bit too inconvenient, especially when you’ve made your decision even before you’ve seen the evidence. It’s time for people like Edward Solomons to leave the system, retire gracefully, and perhaps get some real independence into the adjudication system so that we, and all our customers who we’ve spoken to about this issue, can actually get some real justice on issues like this.

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