Whether you think lockdown legislation was disproportionate or totally necessary, we can all agree that individual freedoms and rights have been suspended. Yet despite COVID restrictions slowly being rolled back, there are worrying signs that government, both national and local, seem keen to cling on to their new powers and retain control over people’s lives.

One of the most egregious examples of this power-grab has been the way that some local authorities have opportunistically taken advantage of a pandemic to impose contentious non-COVID-related transport policy such as low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) without democratic scrutiny.