For many years, Exhibition Road and Prince Consort Road have been blighted with the issue of car meets, where every month over a hundred cars will come and race up and down the road and also perform really dangerous stunts like dough-nuting around the roundabout between Exhibition Road and Prince Consort Road.
We spoke to Knightbridge & Belgravia Councillor Rachael Robathan, who outlined how she is working with her Councillor colleagues, the police and other stakeholders to tackle the problem.
"The police, the local police teams and the council have been trying to enforce, but it just seems to get worse.
So I wanted to update on three things I've been working on, which I hope will begin to address this. And the first is that with my fellow ward councillors, we've allocated part of our ward budget to increase police patrols when we know the car meets are going to be taking place.
The second is that after a meeting I convened back at the beginning of the year, attended by police teams including the national car meet team and officers and councillors from both Westminster Council and Kensington and Chelsea Council, proposals have come forward to change the surface of Prince Consort Road roundabout. For anyone driving normally and with a normal car, they will notice absolutely no difference. But it will mean that for anyone trying to do these high-speed stunts around the road, they won't be able to do it.
And the final thing, the third thing is that I've been working closely with our excellent local policing team led by Clare Napper Paul Wylie, Zack Slaney and Georgie Meadow to collect the evidence we would need to apply for an injunction. And what that would mean is that the police would then have the ability to actually arrest people doing this and prosecute, which hopefully would really put a stop to this for good.
So thank you to all those residents and local businesses who provided impact statements, which are so important, and we hope that we can finally begin to address and crack down on this dangerous issue."
