Parking, litter-picking and tidy-mindedness

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.

It turned out to be a very productive and constructive meeting – two of the Conservative City councillors were there – Lib Dem County Councillor Phryn Dickens was there – Allan Mitchell from the local Focus team was there – as was the Bursar of Peter Symonds, Paul Warren – and about 30 other members of the public.

The biggest issue was on the hours that the proposed parking restrictions would operate. It rapidly became clear that the parking issues in the roads near Peter Symonds are primarily caused by a small minority of students – and so, to address this, all that would be needed – and all that was wanted by local residents (at least in the short term) – is parking restrictions during school hours.

Unfortunately, at some point, it’s been decided that Winchester needs a one size fits all parking policy, so the only offer currently on the table is 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Monday to Saturday – which is way too restrictive for the local area.

While I can see why these hours would make sense to have these hours in areas that would otherwise suffer from shopper parking at the expense of local residents, I don’t see why they make sense in other areas where the problem is commuter or student parking.

I’m all in favour of tidy-mindedness when it comes to litter-picking. Much less so when it comes to administrative convenience and using it to justify over-riding the wishes of local people

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One Response to Parking, litter-picking and tidy-mindedness

  1. Martin says:

    Updated news on this story here

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