B&NES has extended into early January, the time available for residents to comment on the council’s Liveable Neighbourhoods project.
As part of the council’s commitment to giving people a bigger say and putting them at the heart of decision-making, the council is inviting people to provide initial feedback on a number of local areas and help improve their environments to create healthier communities.
The feedback gathered will be used to inform the next stage of the project, which will involve working with residents, businesses and organisations to co-design schemes in 15 areas in and around Bath to help mitigate any potential impact on neighbouring areas.
People can go onto a map-based page and pin their comments via www.bathnes.gov.uk/liveableneighbourhoods up until Monday, January 3 2022.
Councillor Sarah Warren, deputy council leader and cabinet member for Climate and Sustainable Travel said: “We’ve had an excellent response so far with more than 1,400 comments, but we understand that people are busy in the run-up to Christmas so want to give everyone additional time to comment. It is important that communities put forward their ideas to address the issues that affect them and work with us to develop tailored Liveable Neighbourhood schemes that work for their area. I’ve asked for the consultation to extend over Christmas and New Year and it will now finish on January 3.”
Liveable Neighbourhoods aim to give fairer access to residential neighbourhoods, creating healthier outdoor spaces for everyone to share, as well as vibrant local high streets where people want to spend time and money.
By reducing the dominance of vehicles, cutting carbon emissions, improving air quality, enhancing road safety, creating more road space and promoting healthy lifestyles, Liveable Neighbourhoods can make it safer to move around actively. This will enable more people to make journeys on foot and over time, will help reduce car journeys to help cut congestion for those with no alternative but to travel by car.
This is achieved through a range of measures such as, traffic calming, residents’ parking zones and electric vehicle charging.
Earlier this summer Bath & North East Somerset Council allocated £2.2m to develop and deliver fifteen priority Liveable Neighbourhood schemes as part of its Climate Emergency Action Plan. The areas selected are:
- Whitchurch & Queen Charlton (Publow with Whitchurch and Saltford)
- Temple Cloud
- Morris Lane/Bannerdown (Bathavon North)
- Mount Road (Southdown)
- Oldfield Lane & First/Second/Third Avenues
- Edgerton Road/Cotswold Road (Moorlands)
- (New) Sydney Place and Sydney Road (Bathwick)
- Area bounded by Sydney Place, Great Pulteney Street, St Johns Road and Bathwick Street (Bathwick)
- The Circus/Lower Lansdown/Marlborough Lane & Building/Royal Victoria Park/Cork Street area (Kingsmead & Lansdown)
- Lyme Road/Charmouth Road (Newbridge)
- Chelsea Road (Newbridge)
- Snow Hill (Walcot)
- Church St & Prior Park Rd (Widcombe & Lyncombe)
- Entry Hill (Widcombe & Lyncombe)
- Southlands (Weston)
Schemes for these areas will be developed over the coming months in three stages. Details of these can be found here www.bathnes.gov.uk/liveableneighbourhoods and the engagement runs until Monday 3rd Jan 2022.
Ideas from this engagement will shape the concept designs which will be considered by a cross-section of the local community during a series of workshops. The designs will then be updated before going out to wider community consultation in early spring.
Feedback will be considered and reflected in the detailed technical designs which local people will once again be consulted on before schemes are implemented.
It appears, from Cllr Warren’s comment “It is important that communities put forward their ideas to address the issues that affect them and work with us to develop tailored Liveable Neighbourhood schemes that work for their area.”, that LTN’s are going to be imposed on us, it’s a ‘fait accompli’. And I thought their ‘Consultation’ was a genuine effort by the Council to discover if the majority of residents wanted them. So it’s not “Do you want them?” but “What colour would you like them to be?” Once again, the Council bulldozing their agenda through, irrespective of whether we Residents want £2.2m of OUR money spent on them, or not.
Why do we continue to put up with this Council’s dictatorship, they call Liberal Democracy?
So, those areas not included in their ‘Ovals of Opulence’ will become ‘Avenues of Austerity’ and ‘Corridors of Congestion’.
I urge those residents living outside proposed LTNs to rise up and complain about the ghettos the Council is about to make of your areas.