Category: Winchester

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Bus Pass Winchester

Result! Winchester bus passes to start at 9 a.m.

Martin Tod collects a signature from Audrey Bayes on the Lib Dem 'Bad Timing' petitionGood news! The Conservatives have finally given in to popular pressure on the start time for over-60s bus passes in the Winchester District.

Current bus passes allow free travel from 9 a.m.  Back in September, the Conservatives announced that they intended to move the start time to 9.30 a.m.

We objected to the plan at the time, increased the pressure at the Council Meeting on January 9th, launched a petition against it last Thursday, January 17th (see photo left), launched the ‘Bad Timing’ website as part of the campaign on Monday and press released the launch on Tuesday.

The campaign got off to a very encouraging start.  Even though it was pouring with rain when I was out collecting signatures, almost everyone we talked to wanted to sign up.

As late as Tuesday, the Conservative administration on the County Council were still arguing for the 9.30 a.m. start at a meeting of Parish Council leaders.  But earlier today they did a u-turn and decided to go back to the original timing.

Good! Local bus services have been attacked enough by the Conservatives running the County Council without the City Council joining in too.

Categories
Parking Winchester

Victory on parking for local campaigners in Weeke

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.

Categories
Parking Winchester

Tidy-mindedness set to triumph on Weeke parking?

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.

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Alresford Housing LDF Littleton Planning Winchester

Finally… LDF consultation moved to a more suitable venue

After all our previous efforts, the council has finally moved the Winchester consultation meeting for the Local Development Framework to the Guildhall.

This means that there now spaces available on January 17th.

As mentioned previously, this is a hugely important paper for the future of the Winchester area setting out the strategy for major change across the District over the next twenty years – particularly in terms of planning and housing. It’s essential that anyone who is interested should be able to get a place in one of the consultation meetings.

There’s been an incredible level of interest. The meetings in Alresford, Winchester and Wickham have had to be moved to larger buildings and a new meeting has been set up in Littleton.

You can book a place at any of the remaining meetings via this online form.

Categories
Alresford Housing LDF Littleton Planning Winchester

One step forward – two steps back

After all our pressure back in December, the good news is that there is now going to be an extra consultation workshop for the City Council’s Local Development Framework in Littleton Village Hall.

But the two other consultations in the new Winchester Constituency – in Alresford and Winchester’s Discovery Centre are already fully booked out – with 9 or more days to go before the meeting itself.

We still need at least one more consultation in the City itself. The Local Development Framework, while sounding boring, has huge implications for our city over the next 20 years.

As I said back in December:

The proposals on the table (including an effective assumption in favour of developing on Barton Farm, Abbots Barton and Pitt Manor, and including possible further expansion north and east of the current Barton Farm site, on Teg Down, on Bushfield Camp and further into Pitt Manor Farm) are going to be hugely controversial across the city and also have a potentially huge impact in areas outside the city, such as Oliver’s Battery, Badger Farm, Kings Worthy and Compton.

We urgently need more consultation meetings to ensure that local people’s voices are properly heard.