Powys County Council have come up with a scheme to encourage social distancing while out shopping by closing off streets to traffic. This is something that is happening all over the country - but I have friends in Rugby who report that the scheme there was revoked in a week because there were so many complaints.
There are complaints in Hay, too. The PCC want to close off Castle Street, Lion Street and the Memorial Square Car Park between 11am and 4pm every day, and restrict access to Backfold. Blue badge holders will not be affected by the restrictions. The pavements in Hay are narrow, so the idea is that pedestrians can spread out across the street (which happens anyway).
Ironically, the County Council have also launched a scheme to encourage people to shop locally.
Business owners in all these areas say they have not been consulted on the changes, which will directly affect their businesses, which are already struggling during the lockdown. Hay Council has been trying to find alternatives to the PCC scheme, but have been given very little time to do it. The Chamber of Commerce appears to be supporting the County Council scheme.
The person to contact at Powys County Council is vincent.goodwin@powys.gov.uk
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4 comments:
Hi Lesley,
There do seem to be some crossed wires around this. There is nothing in the plans that would negatively affect Backfold, that I can see anyway? In fact, if more people have to park in the Oxford Rd car park, footfall there might actually increase.
The Chamber of Commerce is only "in favour" of the proposals in as much as a large majority of responses to their call for feedback were in favour of it.
There's a good summary of this on the Chamber FB page.
Some businesses seem to think this will reduce footfall, others think it will increase footfall, we won't know until the trial is underway. One thing that I think we can all agree would *definitely* reduce footfall would be a reintroduction of tighter lockdown rules, and these measures seem to be an attempt to prevent that?
Cheers,
Andrew
I have written to express my full apporval - this should have happened years ago!
Hmm - that email address - vincent.goodman does not exist.
Sorry - fixed the email. It's Vincent Goodwin.
Andrew - I'm going on what I read on the Facebook page, in Geraldine Like's post, where she said that there would be restrictions on Backfold. Thanks for the comment.
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