Topics include:
- Station Approach
- Station Area Parking
- New Tory ‘Tip Tax’
- Our crossing campaigns
- The local vote to ‘remain’
- Air Quality
- Grammar Schools
- Safer Routes to School
Category: Parking
Categories
Cherry picker in Tower Street
A resident asked me about the cherry picker in Tower Street. Â Here’s the answer I received:
‘The works that are being undertaken in Tower Street relate to on-going maintenance work by BAM Construction to the elevations of Elizabeth II Court. Due to the location and nature of the works these are weather dependant and have resulted in the cherry picker remaining on the road for longer than originally anticipated. Hampshire County Council and BAM are sorry for any inconvenience this is causing to residents.
The siting of the cherry picker in the residential parking bays is necessary to enable uninterrupted access to Tower Street by pedestrians and vehicles. All options for the siting of the cherry picker were considered before progressing with this work and BAM are keeping the number of bays used to a minimum.
This week, work is progressing well due to the spring weather, and BAM Construction are hoping to be in a position to hand back a number of car parking spaces by the end of the week. BAM are also aiming to have work to the Tower Street elevation completed by the end of April, but once again, this date is weather dependent.’
For your information (not least because Hampshire County Council doesn’t put submissions on its website), our response to the planning application for Westgate School.
Executive Summary
While the architecture of the new school buildings is of a high standard – irresponsibly inadequate attention has been given to the traffic, transport and safety issues arising from 420 new primary pupils attending the expanded Westgate School; and the proposed relocation of the nursery school. Planning permission for the new school buildings should be withheld until there is a clear plan, with timetable and budget, for investing in transport infrastructure in the vicinity of the school in order to create a safer environment around the school with new measures to reduce congestion and increase safety in and around Cheriton Road and to make it easier for the majority of the 4-16 year old pupils to walk for some or all of their journey to school or – for the older pupils – to cycle.
The current planning application is not in accordance with paragraph 35 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) that ‘plans should protect and exploit opportunities for the use of sustainable transport modes …[and] should be …designed where practical to give priority to pedestrian and cycle movements’.   Nor is it in accordance with Policy T5 in the Winchester District Local Plan Review (2006) or CP21 in the Winchester District Local Plan Part 1 – Joint Core Strategy.   The creation of 420 new school places is a major development and the planning application currently itemizes little or no investment in off-site highway improvements including new and improved pedestrian and cycling facilities.  In addition the application is not in accordance with the West Fulflood & Orams Arbour Neighbourhood Design Statement (NDS), published in 2008.
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.