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.