A few of us met at the Royal Mac on Thursday evening. Many thanks to those that could make it along. Its difficult to get along to evening meetings and many of you did report existing commitments and sent apologies and/or comments. Thanks to you too.
We had a fairly short but constructive and lively initial discussion covering quite a few issues. We dwelt longest on the proposed changes to High Street parking and the potentially negative impacts on residents at the Southern end and the potential for displacing parking problems elsewhere; there were mixed views about new High Street crossings and the uncertainty about the the possible introduction of one way traffic on certain streets. In particular we noted there is a gap between the Council’s strategic objectives and the measures apparently being implemented, not to mention rather inadequate consultation and communication between Council and residents.
We reflected that a unified voice for High Street residents had been hitherto lacking, making consultation more difficult. In this regard we noted the excellent progress made by new Shore and Harbour Neighbourhood Group, formed just over a year ago and the marked improvement in communications. If a group was constituted we’d be able to share experiences and strengthen the voice of town centre residents generally and network better.
However, we felt there wasn’t a sufficient number of us to decide much more than to continue the conversation. We agreed that an agenda for the next meeting might focus on:
- developing some broad aims for the group and the area we should cover;
- to look at and compare some possible models for the group, including what form of constitution we could adopt;
- to identify initial roles and responsibilities and volunteers to keep things moving
In the next few weeks I will draft some proposals and bring these along to the next meeting, which I hope will be in around 3-4 weeks time, though it may be an idea to wait until the East holidays are out of the way.
Please feel free to continue to communicate your thoughts (whether burning issues or how we should go about organising ourselves) publicly on the website or by email if you prefer. Keep the ideas coming.
If you feel you have a little bit of time that you could devote to helping get this off the ground, then great – please get in touch with me. In fact, any help and moral support is good.