Alderley Edge Parish Council has agreed to set up a 'Parking and Traffic Flow' forum as a Parish Council initiative, however not all councillors are in favour of the idea.
Cllr Duncan Herald put forward a motion at this week's Parish Council meeting, calling for support from his fellow councillors to establish the forum to examine ways of improving the parking situation and traffic flow in the village.
He explained "Whenever I have talked to people in the village the most prevalent topic of conversation is parking and traffic flow. Over the past couple of years Cheshire East have conducted surveys, traffic flow investigations and had meetings - net result is we have less parking than we had.
"It seems to me it is time we were proactive, rather than reactive. It's getting worse, it has been getting worse and it will go on getting worse. I mentioned this to the Chairman of the Traders Association who was very keen and said any meeting we had would be attended by the Chairman and Vice-Chairman. I have spoken to some local businessmen who are all in favour and saying it must be sorted out.
"So what I am proposing tonight is that the proposal of a forum, or a meeting to see if the people who live here or work here can come up with some sensible solutions. I don't want to collect complaints, some sensible ideas which we can take to Cllr Jones (Leader of Cheshire East Council) and say this is what Alderley Edge wants. What I am suggesting is we suck it and see."
Duncan Herald's proposal was followed by a heated debate with councillors raising a number of concerns, including that the forum was a waste of time and, instead, the Parish Council should focus on pushing Cheshire East to implement the recommendations from the Alderley Edge Parking Review, carried out in 2011.
Whilst Cllr Frank Keegan abstained from voting, he did speak against the idea of a forum and some of the suggestions put forward on alderleyedge.com.
He said "I have been talking to Cheshire East for quite some time. In fact there's an officer coming tomorrow, going round again to discuss exactly what is needed. I've spoken to the Chief Executive, he's been here and seen it, I have spoken to the Chief Operating Officer who has been here and seen it - so they are very much aware of the problems we have and the Chief Executive has authorised highways people to come and draw up a plan. He didn't want to do street by street or incident by incident stuff he wants to come up with a solution for the whole thing because there are different issues, ranging from safety to nuisance to all sorts of stuff.
"On the question of a forum I've seen Cllr Herald's suggestions on the website (alderleyedge.com) for two ideas. One is for chevron parking between Wienholt and the old post office area which involves taking a foot off the pavement. When you look at that in detail it would be an enormous amount of work, which would not be funded by Cheshire East, and the first place it starts is directly opposite the precinct. So you can imagine the chaos that would pursue from people reversing out of those places. It is not unusual these days to see cars queuing up to go in and cars queuing to come out so to add another piece would just be horrible and chaos. I don't believe it would add terribly much to the situation.
"The other idea was to create another entrance to park opposite the War Memorial. There's a little island there and you've got traffic from two directions and cutting across both of these would be cars going to the park. This Council fought Macclesfield some years ago, who wanted to extend that area in the park, eventually we got them to stop by threatening to take them to court because we did not want to lose any of the park to more tarmac. What we need is some sort of order in that particular parking area."
Cllr Keegan added "I am for listing all the problem area we have because at the end of the day when we have a solution come forward it would be nice to tick off that we have actually incorporated everything that we needed to in a suggested response. But for the public to come up with suggestions such as these I don't think it adds anything to the debate. We have to be very careful about associating ourselves with nutty ideas."
Cllr Melanie Connor, who supported the motion, commented "The only reason we wanted a forum was because, unlike you, we don't believe Cheshire East can do anything about the village. If they had wanted to do things about the village they would have done them. All they do is talk, talk, talk. No-one comes up with a plan so we had an idea that we would get like-minded people, who are worried about loss of trade and residents who feel they can't get out of their own driveways, people who can't get out of Redesmere onto Ryleys Lane because of parking which has moved from the side streets here, but Cheshire East are not going to be able to do anything about that.
"Within that group of people might be somebody who is not Cheshire East hatted who has an idea of how we can start doing things better and I don't think we should close ourselves off to that and just believe Cheshire East will solve all our traffic problems because they won't."
Cllr Frank Keegan responded "You're entirely wrong there. I know you've got a thing about Cheshire East but we need Cheshire East to be involved because most of the solution coming forward will be traffic road orders and they need to be the people to publish those and enforce them."
Cllr Matthew Lloyd, who also abstained from voting, said "My concern is you will end up with a lot of ideas but if you don't have Cheshire East Highways involved very early on you will struggle to get anything done. I am not going against the idea of having a community forum, there are real benefits as long it is not just people coming up with unworkable solutions and one of the ways around that is to have highways involved in it."
Cllr Mike Williams commented "This is based on a false premise that Cheshire East don't know what to do about the parking problems in Alderley Edge. They do, they published a report in August 2011, it's been there since that date and it was produced following a series of meetings between highways officers and parish councillors over a period of 12 months.
"It provides a solution to a large part of the problems we have and they were all agreed. If you want to put pressure on Cheshire East, then go to Cheshire East and demand that they implement what's in that policy.
"Doing this is just opening up another diversion which allows Cheshire East to say we'll throw away our report and we'll start from scratch. It could be another two years before you get them to produce another report.
"There is no point in going back and trying to reinvent the wheel - the solutions are already there - there is nothing wrong in having a parking forum but I don't want the Parish Council to be the one that organises it. The Parish Council's role is to get Cheshire East to implement the parking policy which they published."
Cllr Melanie Connor responded "One of their roles as well is to listen to residents and to retailers and that's a very important role and I think we're forgetting that."
The motion for the Parish Council to set up a parking forum was narrowly passed, by three votes to two.
Cllr Duncan Herald will be organising the first meeting of the parking forum in early January, you can connect him via the comment box below if you would like to be involved.
Comments
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.
We have to face facts - we have a vibrant village, one that is becoming more vibrant by the day including an increasing number of 'outsiders'. The village is the envy of most (at a time when many high streets continue to decline) and we need people coming in and spending money to maintain and further develop a great village. We should accept and embrace Alderley is to Manchester as Notting Hill is to London.
Unfortunately this inevitably means more vehicles but lets not lose sight of the associated economic benefit. So we need a strategic one time, not piecemeal, solution which will address the scale of the problem and I struggle to think of one which would be better than the Heyes Lane allotments proposal but if anyone has a better strategic solution then great.
A forum is not going to solve the problem especially when we already have the answer, albeit one that divides opinion.
Parking at Heyes Lane will not stop the schools parking problem. If only.
So provide another car park but how many will honestly use it.
Hoping not sounding negative, maybe more realistic than negative.
I agree with you about the forum not solving anything, when we need to crack on with the solution we have, which is Heyes Lane as a car park.
The emphasis now should be on creating the car park as quickly as possible, so that the disruption which will result from the construction work can be minimised. Plus we should be getting on with work to revamp the Festival Hall.
Sarah,
I don’t believe the night time economy will use Heyes Lane, especially on rainy days. But the main drivers for Heyes Lane are firstly to be a car park for the Festival Hall, and secondly, as a low cost option for the cars which are blocking our streets.
I believe Heyes Lane could be full every day from long term parking permits, simply because there are currently about 60 to 70 cars parked in areas where we would like to introduce new road markings.
I agree about the schools though - that will have to be a combination of road markings and vigilant enforcement. The road markings will be such that the traffic wardens can come and book offenders - it is futile to hope that the PCSO or the Police will attend every day. But the Wardens will!
It is not so long ago that the fear was that the village would be a series of empty shops; the economy changed from retail to restaurant, but there were particular reasons why retail declined. My objective is to protect the remaining vitality in London Road, so that retail customers are attracted to Alderley Edge with enough time to have a browse and a meal.
A large part in achieving that is the ability to move pieces around so that long term parking frees up space, which would solve many problems. Cheshire East Highways will play a vital part in delivering that objective, despite the doubts of the shrill voices.
As I said before, I've never had a problem in finding a parking space in Alderley, whether during the day, evening, night, on a weekday, on a weekend, before or after Christmas, and I've been a very regular customer of the shops, Beauty Works, Costa, Waitrose and just about all the restaurants. People who park on pavements will always park on pavements, it doesn't matter how many fields we tarmac over in the hope that they will go and park in those new car parks. They will never park at the Festival Hall either. They need to be slapped with parking tickets every single time they park on the double yellows (or when obstructing someone's drive or... fill in the blank) instead of in the perfectly available parking spaces. When they all go and park in the available car parks... then we can talk about adding more.
I have also parked at Festival hall to visit the dentist and once when travelled into Manchester by train. Always a number of spaces free.
People are lazy, I am not against 4x4's in any way, it's a free Country but they do seem to be the cars that are always parked where they should not be. Can't see the night time restaurant users parking in a proper car park.
I am glad you agree - and kindly stop saying tarmac - it will be green, as per national trust properties. You will come to thank me, eventually.
I spent years lecturing in science... one point that was hammered home was that no decision can be made without data... will people park at the Festival Hall and/or a 'covered' Heyes Lane site?
I have suggested, both to my colleagues on the Parish Council and on this esteemed organ. that once CE hand over the Hall Car Park to the Parish Council (sometime soon I am led to believe) we try making it a free car park... then if people use it fully, we have data showing that the Hall and by extension the 'covered' Heyes Lane site, will be a viable idea.
Any support for this proposal?
I would welcome your proposal for the gathering of data.
Many of us have been questioning the need for the Heyes Lane car park as the Festival Hall car park is significantly underutilised at present and the planning application said the space allowed for ample parking.
I would ask one thing. Councillor Keegan referred to the Heyes Lane car park as a revenue generator for the village so we can only assume that it would be a paid car park. As such it would seem logical to retain the charges for the Festival Hall during the survey so we get a like for like comparison.
the thought behind my suggesting a free parking was to encourage people to use the facility... then once they realise that its a good place to park, charges (hopefully low) could be brought in and so we get the like-for-like which you suggest.
The Alderley Park's car park in full, Ryleys Lane has between 12-15 cars parked all day.
Therefore if you include the reduce number of workers in the village due to the festive season and also all the teachers and staffs of schools without car parking spaces inside the school. I estimate there is at least the need of extra 100 affordable spaces needed so that we can free up the Alderley Park's car park and reduce the amount of long term street parking.
So implementing the reports findings would be a positive step forward, as Mr Keegan has suggested. Also gathering more data and residents' ideas, as Mr Herald has suggested, would also seem wise.
What does not seem to appear in the report, however, is the requirement to turn the allotments into a car park. The 52 spaces at the Festival Hall are not currently being used, why would anyone see a need to increase these until they are fully utilised? It makes no sense to me. Is there something I am missing here? Has there been an assessment of the cost of this Hayes Lane car park scheme or an estimate of how many years it will take to repay the investment through the parking charges. I am assuming that Mr Keegan has got all this worked out.
Are the parking places at the Hall indeed under-utilised?
Several of them are rented out very cheaply on a 'permanent basis' (17 if my memory serves me well; it may not) and there are a number of 'free passes' (7 i.m.m.s.m.w.;i.m.n.) and these may not be occupied every day.
Do forgive me if I have the odd doubt on figures emanating from C.E.
I do agree that some of the figures in the report do not stack up, is it the only report available? Why would you doubt the figures of C.E.? I guess that is why you want to get ideas and data from people in the local community. After all, it is impossible to come up with a solution unless you have fully defined the problem.