Agenda item

Purpose: To respond to a Motion, regarding the pedestrianisation of roads in Newbury Town Centre, which was presented to Council by Councillor David Marsh in September 2020.

Resolved that:

·         The measures proposed in Councillor Marsh’s Motion are not implemented, at least in the short term;

·         The consultants tasked with undertaking the Newbury Town Centre Study be asked to include the principle of permanent pedestrianisation in their work in order to facilitate consensus or, at least, a way forward on the issue;

·         Prior to any informal consultation with stakeholders, the consultants work with the Highways Network Management team to ensure that any specific proposals made public are in accordance with the relevant road traffic legislation;

·         An assessment is made of the extent to which the capacity that the town centre roads add to the network is actually needed. This would require modelling work by external transport consultants and therefore have time and cost implications;

·         Should the above work determine that changes to the pedestrianised hours are desirable and can be implemented on a practical and legal basis a permanent traffic regulation order could be drafted and taken forward to statutory consultation.

This decision is eligible to be ‘called-in’.  However, if the decision has not been ‘called-in’ by 5.00pm on 29 December 2020, then it will be implemented.

The Executive considered a report (Agenda Item 10) concerning the response to the Motion regarding the pedestrianisation of roads in Newbury Town Centre, which had been presented to Council by Councillor David Marsh in September 2020.

Councillor Richard Somner stated that as a proposal the report had been discussed in detail at the Transport Advisory Group meeting in October. The position of the authority, Officers and the Portfolio Holder had been consistent in that this had originally been a temporary under exceptional circumstances and whilst it had been popular with some it was equally disliked by others. As could be seen via social media and in press releases it had not found wholesale support in one direction or the other. Councillor Somner reminded Members of the engagement with key stakeholders originally and throughout the temporary measure and this would continue to be the case as the study of the town centre took place. Full consultation would also need to take place for any permanent measure to be enacted should that be the outcome. There was still some concern about removing traffic from one of the town centre routes as it would merely increase traffic on the others. New studies would need to be undertaken to provide up to date figures to include in any debate if that was what came out of the town centre work that was ongoing.

Councillor Carolyne Culver said that she welcomed the fact that full pedestrianisation in the long term option had been included in the paper as she felt that it was really important from the point of view of helping to meet the objectives of the climate emergency in the Environment Strategy by reducing pollution. It would also assist with social distancing at the moment and would enable people to shop safely. She felt that it would be a great asset if full pedestrianisation could be introduced in the future as it would make the town centre an even nicer place to be.

RESOLVED that:

(1)       The measures proposed in Councillor Marsh’s Motion would not be implemented, at least in the short term;

(2)       The consultants tasked with undertaking the Newbury Town Centre Study be asked to include the principle of permanent pedestrianisation in their work in order to facilitate consensus or, at least, a way forward on the issue;

(3)       Prior to any informal consultation with stakeholders, the consultants would work with the Highways Network Management team to ensure that any specific proposals made public were in accordance with the relevant road traffic legislation;

(4)       An assessment to be made of the extent to which the capacity that the town centre roads added to the network was actually needed. This would require modelling work by external transport consultants and therefore had time and cost implications;

(5)       Should the above work determine that changes to the pedestrianised hours were desirable and could be implemented on a practical and legal basis a permanent traffic regulation order could be drafted and taken forward to statutory consultation.

Other options considered:

(1)       Implementing a 24-hour traffic free zone on a temporary basis with immediate effect, as proposed by the Motion, was not considered by officers to be reasonable within the legislation. Section 14(1) of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 stated that the authority must be “satisfied that traffic on the road should be restricted or prohibited… because of a likelihood of danger to the public”.

(2)       Implementing a 24-hour traffic free zone on a permanent or experimental basis with immediate effect was not possible due to the amount of preparatory work that was required, including the consideration of the issues listed in 5.13 of the report, and the requirement to consult stakeholders.

(3)       Completely ruling out any changes to the traffic-free hours would not be appropriate given the views expressed by Members at Transport Advisory Group and the forthcoming wider study of Newbury town centre, of which vehicular access was a key component.