Martin Tod

Just back from speaking at the Cabinet (Traffic and Parking) Committee at the City Council - and there’s good news.

George Beckett and the Council have listened to local people and local businesses on the proposed parking changes and decided not to press ahead with ‘Pay and Display’ instead of ‘Pay on Foot’. All credit to them.

At the meeting, I took them through a survey we recently completed on parking: 94% of car park users that returned our survey were opposed to changing the system.

People like the current system.  It means they don’t have the same pressure to rush back to the car and it gives them more chance to stay longer in Winchester. And that, in turn, is good for local businesses.

It was clear from the survey that the problems with pay on foot have also been overstated.  Although a majority of people in the survey have had a problem at some point or another, it happens to most people very infrequently. And when things do go wrong, they told us that Winchester’s parking attendants do an excellent, prompt and effective job in sorting out problems in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Many congratulations to Steve Feeney and his team in Weeke for their successful campaign to get sensible parking hours in their local roads.

As previously blogged, I was concerned when I saw that the Council Officers were planning to overrule the points raised by local people at the final decision-making meeting on Tuesday.

I hoped the councillors would see sense and back the hours that local people wanted.

The good news is that they have. 

Councillor Wood started the parking meeting by announcing that they would be going with Monday-Friday 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. - in line with residents’ wishes.

As Steve Feeney points out on his campaign website, this doesn’t mean Weeke’s parking problems are now sorted, but it is undoubtedly a good step forward and a credit to his work and the work of local people.

Back in November, I wrote about the excellent public meeting held in Peter Symonds about parking in Weeke. The people there had concerns about the proposed parking hours on their local streets and, pretty unanimously, wanted to have shorter hours and fewer days with parking restrictions. These would have tackled the problem they had with student parking, while being considerably more convenient for local residents.

Now the officers have put forward their proposal and … the proposed hours that the parking restrictions will operate remain unchanged.

Very disappointing. This isn’t about high politics - it’s about trusting local people to know what’s best for their local area. I hope that the Councillors at the meeting next Tuesday see sense and vote for the hours that local people want.

You can find out more about the local campaign via Steve Feeney’s excellent campaign website.

A good session helping Winchester Litterpickers at the station this morning. They meet every Monday at 9.30 a.m. on the Station forecourt - anyone who wants to help is very welcome - equipment will be provided if you don’t already have a litter picker of your own. It’s both amazing and depressing how much litter can build up in a week - and very satisfying to help pick it all up.

The Litter Pickers are a great institution and make a really important (and noticeable) difference to the city: it was excellent that John Green-Wilkinson’s role in setting up the Litterpickers was recognised in the New Year Honours with an MBE.

I was invited along to their annual party on Friday night as one of their occasional helpers - but unfortunately could only get there towards the end due to a public meeting at Peter Symonds about proposed parking restrictions in Weeke.

This was set up by a local resident, Steve Feeney, who also set up a helpful website to explain the issue.

(more…)

A depressing decision by the Conservatives at the council meeting on Wednesday… in essence, they’ve voted through parking proposals which could have been designed to increase congestion, increase CO2 emissions and decrease air quality in the city centre. Their plans combine a big hike in parking charges at the Park & Ride - dramatically reducing the saving that this represents vs. town centre parking - with the reintroduction of ‘first half hour free’ for on street town centre parking. This has the effect of:

• Encouraging more people to drive to the centre - rather than using the Park & Ride
• Encouraging an increased number of short trips into the centre - rather than fewer longer trips
• Encouraging people to drive around looking for parking meters - rather than parking quickly

all of which will have a negative effect on congestion, emissions and air quality.

Their argument for this change is that it will help a subset of small businesses such as “locksmiths, dry cleaners and sandwich shops”. Quite aside from the complete lack of any thought about the impact of this change on the environment, it’s a pretty feeble argument economically too. Most businesses - whether small, medium or large - benefit from people spending longer in town and, if anything, the majority of Winchester’s businesses are likely to suffer as a result of these changes, rather than see any benefit.