My email to the Council’s Highways Dept before the holidays regarding the current plans for restrictions on Wood Lane, Rothwell and my request for them to get it right:
I do still feel restrictions are needed urgently yes, but in your email you state that if we don’t accept the scheme as it stands, at least for the first six months, then we would have to go back to the drawing board and start again, which could take years.
I don’t accept this. An experimental order has been put in place, all it needs is tweaks to it. All it needs is to change aspects of the scheme to allow residents, businesses and short stay customers of local shops to park. It can’t be beyond the wit of man to sort this out. I know that you and your team of Highways professionals have the necessary expertise to make this a scheme that is workable and acceptable, in terms of stopping all day parking from Valley Park without stopping residents parking all day and stopping people parking to visit a shop.
As far as I’m concerned I’m not happy with the plans as they stand. Myself and my former ward colleague Cllr David Nagle asked from the beginning for residents parking to go hand in hand with any restrictions and have always been told that we can’t have it.
Something needs to be done urgently but the restrictions have to take into account the needs of residents and businesses, who shouldn’t be inconvenienced. This is the part currently missing from the plans.
Until these tweaks have been made, I can’t support the proposed scheme.
But I don’t support going back to the drawing board, changes should be made to the ‘experimental order’ as a matter of urgency.
Rothwell residents have waited long enough for a solution.
