St Ives Town Q&A Gathering
22nd April 2024
St Ives Town Q&A Gathering
22nd April 2024
From The St Ives Town Council website here:
View the recording of the 2024 meeting via our Facebook Page.
The 2024 gathering in addition to the Town Councillors, representatives from Cornwall Council, NHS Stennack Surgery, St Ives BID, NCI, St Ives Town Deal, the Police were in attendance."
It is important we all watch the video of this event, attended by some 100 plus, which you can find on the St Ives Town Council Facebook page here. (The sound is appalling as despite being awarded many millions of pounds, St Ives can still only afford one small static microphone at an overcrowded event.)
To make your lives easier, we have bookmarked the following key starting points & embedded them on our website:
Consultation is now over, apparently. We are currently taking issue with this. Bookmarked in the video below is the introduction from Jess Morris (Town Deal Commissioning Specialist for Penzance & St Ives Projects) & Trish Hewitt (Communications Lead)
The (surprising) responses to our question:
Why has the rising bollard been “shelved”?
Because of, as The Mayor told Councillor Andrew Mitchell, “Technical difficulties”?
Because as it says in the update (available via our website here) we’re going to wait & see how much traffic comes through town & then if we adjust our behaviour, [unclear] then the bollard will be no more?
Or have people realised the damage that bollard would have done to the residents and businesses in Downlong?
Bookmarked in the video below are
Our question
Responses from :
Jess Morris
Trish Hewitt
Councillor Linda Taylor (Head of Cornwall Council)
Councillor Johnnie Wells (Town Mayor)
Councillor James Ryall (St Ives East & Carbis Bay)
We have transcribe the key responses to our question here:
Her understanding (& she stressed she is not from Transport) is:
“It’s threefold really. For us to have an LTE, you have to justify why you need that. Particularly with hard breaks such as bollards, you need to justify the need for that bollard, because it does have a massive impact on the people who live in the area, on emergency services, deliveries and businesses. So you need to justify why that’s there, so it has been shelved at the moment in terms of as I understand it. But it is still in discussion – it has to still go through a formal process, it’s got to go through the sub-group, it also has to go back to the board so I don’t make any of those decisions. But from a highways point of view and from a transport point of view the justification for having a bollard at the moment, there are significant technical issues with trying to fit a bollard system in St Ives. But this is a phase 1, the Town Deal is delivering a Phase 1 of what was asked from a transport point of view within the Town Deal process, and that was costed out at £14M. We’ve got about £5.5M to spend within the Town Deal so we were never going to be able to deliver the whole lot. In terms of the bollards, it’s Phase 1. The LTE, that message came through very clearly and strongly in the consultation before Christmas that that was wanted within the town. By doing it this way, you put it in. If people abuse that system and it doesn’t become a low traffic environment, it may well be that later on that they look at a more enforced way of keeping people out. But it’s a softer approach to start with and that will be a phase 2 – it won’t be delivered within a Town Deal.”
Linda had an interesting fourth reason:
“The Bollards were never an option, they didn’t have a legal position & you cannot proceed with the bollards, so the bollards are out of the conversation, full stop.”
Jess Morris: “Yes, no, you’re absolutely right.”
“I think for the foreseeable future it’s not going to be included, so that’s that.”
“For the period of the Town Deal, which is the funded project, it won’t be included. At the moment the conclusion is that when these systems go in there is such a reduction in traffic you don’; t have to have a manual barrier, ever. They are managed – they become self-managing, and that’s the hope I think with St Ives.”
Asked for clarification on the rising bollards “Will we democratically push them out of the scenario altogether?”
Both Councillors Taylor & Wells said “They are not in the scenario, they’ve gone, they are out.”
There is much more worth listening to regarding how the plans have been presented as a fait accompli, ongoing consultation, the attitude that planners know best & dismiss the input of the residents actually affected & the lack of alternative parking in this or any plan which we think will simply make St Ives a no-go destination. There is too much for us to share here – please watch it all.
We hope that the plans to make parking in central St Ives available only to locals only & their visitors & limit holiday makers & day trippers (all our phrases) to parking on the edges will reduce traffic in to Downlong. What concerns us is that visitors to homes & businesses in Downlong will not be considered acceptable journeys, nor identifiable by any traffic monitoring technology.
We think the message has not got through. Rising bollards to enforce the LTE have been thwarted for now by technical issues, a lack of money, and possibly have no legal justification. (See the national picture on our website here.)
If traffic along Wharf Road & into Downlong does not reduce by what is currently an unspecified level, then somebody may well try again in the future.
There has been no work done to identify what journeys along Wharf Road are being made, how many are necessary (residents, businesses, local institutions & those visiting or delivering to them) & discretionary, (so visitors driving through either sightseeing or parking).
Up to now there have been wildly differing views expressed by all members of our Town Council regarding who should & should not be permitted to drive along Wharf Road & so into Downlong – the LTE. We need to work now on influencing how the LTE is established & traffic measured for the future.