Category: Trip to the Shops

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Pavements Trip to the Shops Winchester

Trip to the Shops – progress

Encouraging news from the Hampshire Chronicle about the County Council’s response to pressure from our Trip to the Shops campaign and local residents about the state of Winchester’s pavements:

Why a trip to the shops may be a thing of the past

Pledge to spend £2m on pavement repairs

HIGH street pavements in Winchester are in line to be replaced at a cost of £2m, city chiefs announced this week.

The move will delight the many residents and visitors who have endured and complained about the city’s own version of crazy paving’ which, in some cases, has led to people tripping on the uneven surfaces.

We’ve been campaigning hard on this since last year (see reports here). It’s good to see progress, although I know from local residents that there’s a lot of work needed outside the city centre – and I know from personal experience that we will continue to have problems until there is tougher supervision of contractors by the County Council and better control of overweight lorries and trucks being allowed to drive over high street flag stones.

We’re going to keep up the pressure until all the problem areas have been tackled.

You can still report problems on our ‘trip to the shops’ campaign website.

My biggest memory of the first day collecting signatures in the High Street back last December was getting signatures from a troupe of local morris dancers!

Martin Tod collects Trip to the Shops signatures from Christmas Clog Morris Dancers in Winchester High Street

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Pavements Trip to the Shops

Result…

Tackling the pavements outside Lloyds Bank

At last! The ludicrous state of the pavements outside Lloyds Bank is finally being tackled.

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Trip to the Shops

Trip to the Shops – making progress

Ken Thornber, Leader of the Conservative County Council, wrote to the Hampshire Chronicle last week responding to our ‘Trip to the Shops‘ campaign announcing funding to improve the pavements in Winchester High Street – an encouraging start to the campaign. We won’t be easing off: we’re continuing to report problems (particularly flooding in the last few days) and push for improvements.

I’ve written back to the Chronicle as follows:

I was pleased to read Cllr Thornber’s letter in response to our continuing ‘Trip to the Shops’ campaign announcing that funding has been made available to repave some of the city centre areas most affected by lorry damage.

All I would ask is that the County Council doesn’t exclusively focus on areas affected by lorry damage. Many of the problems that we have reported have been caused by inadequately supervised repair work by water, gas or cable companies. As the City Centre manager pointed out the same week, there is more work by utility companies to come: it will be essential that they are required to do a better job than they have in the past restoring the pavements afterwards. It is also important to note that by no means all the problems that local people are unhappy about are in the city centre.

Categories
Pavements Trip to the Shops

Trip to the Shops

Martin Tod collects Trip to the Shops signatures from Christmas Clog Morris Dancers in Winchester High Street
David Spender collecting signatures for the Trip to the Shops campaign in Winchester High StreetCharlotte Bailey collecting signatures for the Trip to the Shops campaign in Winchester High StreetKelsie Learney collecting signatures for the Trip to the Shops campaign in Winchester High Street

We got off a great start this Saturday with a large number of people signing our Trip to the Shops petition about the state of Winchester’s pavements, including this group of Morris Men (Christmas Clog) who were collecting funds for Naomi House. Presumably you’re even more likely to trip in the centre of Winchester if you’re dancing rather than walking…

What was most concerning was the number of people who told us they, or a close relative, had needed medical care following a fall on Winchester streets. There was a particularly lethal trip hazard by some cable covers next to Barclays which we reported as a top priority.

There’s a webpage that lets you report trip hazards and similar problems on the Hampshire County Council website.