Saturday 12 June 2010, author: admin

RESIDENTS PARKING

If you and/or your staff have been adversely affected by the recently implemented Residents Parking scheme then it is VERY important that you let me know at  thepaulwesley@btinternet.com and John Halliday at  john.halliday@devon.gov.uk and Cllr Black at paula.black@mac.com

This scheme was implemented at the request of Totnes residents from three streets of the town and we might assume that it is popular with them and other residents even those who already have garages and/or driveways. According to Cllr. Black, children can now play football in the streets and many emails of thanks have been sent to her.

However, as is frequently the case with the County Council there appears to be an absence of either the desire, or the resources, or the culture, or the intelligence, to do proper prior research/consultation into the possible or probable consequences of their schemes.

That this scheme would push commuter parking to the edges of the Residents Zones and create a demand for equal rights to R P schemes and so on until the whole town is covered might seem a trifle obvious. That is indeed what is happening already.  I am informed that the residents of Copland Meadow are leading the charge.

The likelihood of an increase in the number of commuters taking up car park spaces away from visitors/shoppers was raised by the Chamber with SHDC last year (with the Chief Executive, The Leader of the Council and with the Chief Finance Officer) Apparently there was no communication about this scheme between the District and County Councils.

The Chamber is expecting to meet shortly with officers from SHDC to discuss these matters but it is the County Council who are responsible and to whom you should direct your initial concerns. As long as you also inform me of the specifics of your concerns I will gather them all together and on that basis seek a meeting with the relevant personnel.

Please make your submissions as evidence based as possible where appropriate and if you can, a potential solution. But don’t let me dissuade you from just sounding off.

EXPERIMENTAL TRAFFIC ORDER

The latest proposal from the County Council is to prohibit a right-hand turn from the High Street into the Plymouth Road and out of Cistern Street onto the Kingsbridge Hill. As you can imagine this proposal has given rise to many heated objections ranging from Bob the Bus to residents in adjoining streets potentially affected by traffic seeking alternative routes.

This proposal, it is claimed, will help deal with the “problem” of rat-run traffic despite the fact that the Highways Dept. admit that they have not got a clue exactly how much rat-run traffic there is or precisely when it occurs and therefore have no means of assessing whether or not the road alterations work.

According to the County Councilor  “traders should provide figures for before and after the experiment to see if business is affected “. In other words, businesses should do the research that the Council have not done and bear any financial hit that might occur. This does not seem like a great idea.

The Totnes Town Council, at last Monday’s meeting unanimously rejected acceptance of the proposal.

However, both the Traffic and Transport Forum and the Town Centre Traffic Management Group seem to want to keep the ETO on the table. At the former, the County Councillor appeared to be of the opinion that the Town Council’s views could carry less weight than her own. But perhaps we all misheard. I hope so.

The Town Centre Traffic management Group agreed that a more robust consultation was needed. A meeting to attempt this will be held at the Guildhall, at 9.30am on Wed. June 16th. That’s this coming Wed. and as I will be out of the country and unable to represent your views I would urge you to take 15 minutes of you time to attend this meeting to present your ideas on this proposal. Your thoughts will not be taken into consideration unless they are presented in some way to this meeting so please take this opportunity to be consulted, no matter how inconvenient the time.

CONES

Recently there has been a spate of long stretches of parking space on the town being taken up by a long line of cones. As far as I can tell there has been no indication of who they belong to or why they are there. Neither have any of the adjacent businesses been informed of how long the valuable parking spaces will be out of use. On occasion they have sat there for a full day without any work apparently being carried out. If the culprits are private utility companies then they do have form in not caring about any disruption they cause. Whoever is doing this they should not be placing cones more than one hour before work is due to start.

If there is no indication on the cones of who the perpetrators might be then I think it reasonable to remove them and free up the parking space, as I have done on two occasions. Alternatively you could contact the street scene officer at SHDC, Mr Ian Hosking. Good Luck.

SUNDAY MARKET

The preferred activity of the Chamber is to promote the town and events to bring in more business and increase the footfall. So it is with some pleasure that I can announce that a Sunday Food Market is to start on June 20th with the support of the Chamber. If you can manage to open on a Sunday, and I know not all of us can or wish to, then there is trade to be had. This Market will, it is hoped, help make the town a destination for 7 days a week.

Paul Wesley``