Is common sense a thing of the past?

I have to wonder if those who are responsible for making parking decisions in the city live perhaps outside Bath and even have their offices away from the city so have little practical experience of the difficulties experienced on a daily basis by the ordinary citizen in our overcrowded city.

I was told, and this may not be true, that two new hotels had their application to build underground car parking turned down on the basis it would reduce the number using the city car parks. Can that really be true?

Two questions: Firstly, when did the planners try to find a place in those car parks and, secondly, had they stopped for a moment to take into consideration the huge increase in traffic that is as a result of the building on the ex MOD sites where each of the hundreds of houses built have at least one car.

That would be enough concern for this letter but I have another.

I live near the small Tesco on Bathwick Hill which has an excellent car park behind it.

Unbelievably it is now shut the shop tells me because the entrance is too narrow to take a car and a pedestrian at one time.

I can hardly believe that the planners would prefer folk and particularly families with young children to fight for parking on the very busy main road rather than use the quiet safe parking area behind the shop?

May I point out we live in a Georgian city which when they built it didn’t anticipate the problems of the car, but do the planners really believe the public are unable to judge whether to walk the few paces through the arch safely?

Am I the only one who thinks common sense is fast becoming a thing of the past? June Ward By email