CALL me cynical, but sometimes I suspect that our local politicians plan their contributions to meetings with headlines in mind.
There was a classic at the online (on-and-off line might be a better description due to various technical malfunctions) meeting of Wiltshire’s strategic planning committee on Wednesday.
“The fundamental bloody-mindedness of Salisbury” was what planners needed to reckon on, according to Cllr Fred Westmoreland.
“If you try to change something you had better have a pretty good argument.”
Well, one person’s bloody-mindedness is another’s independence of thought, I say. But he had a point.
Which was that the latest vision for revitalising our city, known as the Central Area Framework, would end in tears unless residents were on board.
For example, there have long been aspirations by successive local authorities to redevelop the Brown Street and Salt Lane car parks, and they haven’t gone away.
People who live nearby have no option but to use these for evening parking, Cllr Westmoreland pointed out.
Major projects team leader David Milton reassured him that no car parks would be built on unless the community were happy with alternative parking arrangements.
Cllr Stewart Dobson pointed out that market towns such as ours rely on people coming in from outlying villages, and they in turn rely on their cars.
They can’t be expected to cycle for miles, and won’t always find it convenient to hang around for a park and ride bus.
“Planners don’t seem to realise that personal transport isn’t going to die,” he declared. “It will change to be electric, which will solve air pollution. But there’s nothing in this document to do with encouraging charging points.
“It’s a thing of the moment to say that market towns ought to go pedestrian. But we are going to seriously affect the retail businesses that rely on people being able to easily get in.”
Transport was actually the only element of this well-researched and generally well-received exercise that provoked any real debate.
And understandably it added to some members’ worries about the separate issue of the experimental ban on through traffic, or People Friendly Streets scheme, which is about to hit us.
Cllr Andrew Davis asked how this would affect tradespeople trying to work on, or deliver to, homes in the city centre.
No answer.
Cllr Brian Dalton asked if the scheme’s introduction could be delayed slightly. Given the closure of the A338 for three weeks, at the same time as the return to school, he foresaw “a perfect storm of chocked traffic”.
And who could disagree?
But it wasn’t strictly the committee’s province. So we’ll just have to wait and see how it pans out.
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