Parking is suspended and some barriers are in place but signage is incomplete and there is still none of the free one hour of parking promised in Castle Yard.
Your comments and questions suggest confusion and frustration across the town. So what is going on with Petersfield’s social distancing measures?
Why are the barriers hard up against the curb? What’s happened to the free one hour parking announced last week? Should blue badge holders be concerned?
The county and district councillor who has taken responsibility for the scheme, Robert Mocatta called us to make a statement about the project (you can hear it in this edition of the Morning Report) and he also agreed to answer questions which are put to him on your behalf by Suzie Wilde.
Councillor Mocatta is a county councillor for Petersfield Butser and a district councillor for Buriton and East Meon.
Following our interview, the barriers which were lining the pavement have been moved to the edge of the parking spaces and yellow ramps have been installed to bridge the curb.
If you notice the lady crossing outside M&S in the High Street picture, it looks like the trolley she is pushing wouldn’t fit down the ramp without hitting the barrier, she’d have to lift it sideways to carry on towards the Square, so how does someone in a wheelchair negotiate these? The space created by no parking outside Laura Ashley on 9 July was occupied by tables & people drinking coffee, was that the reason for removing parking or was it to create more walking space?
What a ridiculous farce.
We have barriers that were supposed to provide a wider pavement that were actually placed next to the kerb and so reduced the space people had to move.
We have virtually none of the on street parking that we are all so familiar with, so people are driving round and round wondering where to park. And then probably just not bothering with town centre shops and amenities.
There was apparently a scheme to make some car parks free, that the District Council thought had been agreed by the County Council, but the CC had second thoughts when it occurred to them that free parking would mean their revenue being reduced – or perhaps they saw the chance of an opportunistic windfall if they kept the charges.*
But the DC went ahead with the scheme anyway.
All of this to remove the non-existent risk from people passing one another whilst out in the fresh air on what are, let’s face it, not very busy pavements on our pleasant little market town.
Please show some common sense, drop the whole silly idea, remove those awful plastic barriers and return parking restrictions to normal.
*Speaking of this precious “public money” that the CC are so concerned about, please can you explain how much of it has been spent on this farce?
Thank you.