I also attended the drop-in session yesterday and would agree with the comments about what an inadequate forum it was for such a significant and contentious issue. However, my reason for writing this post is that I wanted to make people aware of the following two bits of information that I gleaned from one of the project managers (Joanna(?), one of only two PMs in attendance (apparently, there should have been another one): 1) Re: Postal problem with the consultation document: I asked Joanna about a rumour that I had heard that not all households had received the consulatation document. She confirmed that this was true; there had been a postal error so not every household had got the mailing. She said that they were dealing with this by sending out another mailing during the course of next week (28/2 - 1/2) to ALL households telling them about the error and asking householders who hadn?t had the mailing to either source the information online or proactively contact the Council to ask for a hard copy to be mailed to them. 2) Re: ?Why are we conducting a parking study?? This is the fundamental question and is taken verbatim from the consultation document. The answers are given as follows: ?The council has received many requests for parking controls to be introduced in the area.? and ?Many local residents are finding it harder and harder to park near their homes...? I said to Joanna that these statements were simply too vague to be either meaningful or appropriate to be used as the fundamental argument for such a significant matter, so what were the actual supporting data? She said there had been 117 requests during the last 3 years. (N.B. I forgot to ask if these were separate requests from 117 individual residents, or just a grand total that may/may not include some residents who submitted multiple requests). I then asked how many people there are in the ED area, and Joanna said 7,000 (I think, but am not 100% sure, that she said that this is a combined figure for residents and businesses). The person sitting next to me worked out that 117 is 1.67% of 7,000. I hope that this information is of some interest. Whilst writing, I have also heard a rumour of some form of residents? meeting about this issue being held this Tuesday (29/2) evening at the church at Goose Green. I haven?t been able to verify this one way or another, so can anyone help, please? Thank you.
