Thornbury Town and District Residents Association

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Put proposals for Thornbury High Street to one side at least until June 2022,

Jan 18, 2022

This an email sent to South Gloucestershire Councillors on 18th January 2022

 

Withdraw or Delay application to WECA

We believe the SGC Business Case for Thornbury High Street may be on the Agenda for the WECA meeting on Friday 28th January 2022

We request the SGC put their proposals for Thornbury High Street to one side at least until June 2022, once SGC have responded to our FOI requests

This will give time for SGC to conduct a full, fair and respectful Consultation with the Public and come up with some plans that actually suit Thornbury, its users and businesses

Please help ensure that local democracy is alive

 

Thornbury High Street

Background

Many of you will know Thornbury and hopefully you will have enjoyed your visits particularly to the High Street with its many listed buildings and independent businesses

Its unique character has evolved over the centuries and the High Street serves both the residents of Thornbury itself and of the surrounding outlying villages

However, if you have visited since closure of the High Street in Spring 2020 you will have had a very different impression

In June 2020 SGC hastily, without any proper consultation with the Public, or even the Town Council, closed the High Street under cover of the Pandemic. The closure has ripped the heart out of the community

The proposal to bring buses back could be helpful (dependent upon all buses being allowed back 7 days a week) but the lack of parking for both blue badge and short-term parking for others will continue to deter people from using Thornbury High Street

Thornbury is not a typical High Street and the one size fits all “solution” to our “supposed problems” is and will continue to be a disaster

Right from the start the imposition of the High Street closure in spring 2020 was badly conceived and implemented

We have had 20 months to live with SGC “Vision” and without doubt it is killing and will continue to kill the Town

 

Consultations

We do not believe that the Survey, carried out between July 2020 and February 2021, was a full, fair and respectful Consultation. There were no options for keeping through traffic in either direction or discussion of the problems associated with the diversion of traffic onto roads that are not suitable for the increased traffic. The subsequent Report to Cabinet was heavily biased and not fit for purpose

Toby Savage’s assertion that 47% of people who had visited the High Street more than once a week were in favour of the closure needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. The vaccines had not been introduced at that stage and the Survey was carried out when “project fear” was at its height. Many people did not even venture out of their homes let alone conduct “unnecessary” visits to the High Street. Buses were diverted and parking of any nature was heavily discouraged by barriers & wardens at each end of the High Street. Really only 29% of people were in favour SGC proposals.

The Survey questions were very heavily biased towards closure, even so where people were able to indicate their true thoughts on the form (Question 13) the vast majority were against SGC proposals

SGC hastily consulted 9 local groups of which only 3 groups were in favour of closure. In reality the number of groups should have been much larger and more representative of the users of the High Street and the actual consultations more thorough

Subsequently the TROs were signed off despite 90% of people who made comments being against SGC proposals

The “Consultation” process has been a farce from beginning to end

 

Freedom Of Information requests (FOI)

The Residents Association, which was formed after two Public Meetings last autumn has raised two sets of Freedom of Information requests, essentially to see if SGC had undertaken sufficient or indeed any research into background information either before or during the Consultation process. SGC extended the time to reply from 20 to 40 days and even so the answers to our first FOI show that SGC have not done their homework. Half the answers will not be available until after May 2022, several not addressed and others had out of date information. For instance, there is no information or acknowledgement on the increased response times for emergency services for properties to the North of the Town Centre or indeed unacceptable traffic congestion and pollution along the diversion route. Safety for pedestrians and traffic has not been sufficiently addressed

Our second FOI is also delayed by a further 20 days and we understand will not be available until the end of January 2022. We are not holding our breath

 

Financial Case

We believe the SGC Financial Case is based upon business in a typical High Street in a typical large town centre which would have large national chains and so is not relevant

Local businesses in Thornbury had not been approached before preparation of the Business Case and hence the Financial Case has no merit

 

Withdraw or Delay application to WECA

We believe the SGC Business Case may be on the Agenda for the WECA meeting on Friday 28th January 2022

We request the SGC put their proposals for Thornbury High Street to one side at least until June 2022, once SGC have responded to our FOI requests

This will give time for SGC to conduct a full, fair and respectful Consultation with the Public and come up with some plans that actually suit Thornbury, its users and businesses

Please help ensure that local democracy is alive

 

Website           www.thornburyresidents.org

Please look up our website which contains far more information than we can fit into an email

 

Thornbury Town and District Residents Association

18th January 2022