Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Council calls for plan on changes to road scheme
NORTH Somerset Council has asked its officials to draw up a plan on how to implement and pay for major changes to the Clevedon seafront scheme – but warned that it is “not right” to fully reverse the scheme.
An independent review into the much-derided scheme on The Beach recommended major changes, including removing the wiggly lines and most of the “yellow-brick road” surface, restoring diagonal parking facing out to sea, and replacing the two-way cycle lane with a single contraflow lane on the other side of the road.
The review’s findings were brought before the council executive this week.
It told the council’s director of place to come up with options for how to implement the recommendations and how to fund the estimated £375,000 price tag to fix it.
A special meeting of the council executive will be held in March to discuss the plans drawn up and make a decision.
But Clevedon Walton councillor Michael Pryke said: “The review never asked the question of ‘should we reverse the entire scheme?’
“And so I think it would be prudent... for the director of place to come together and bring a proposal that suggests what a full revision would look like including costings, and I appreciate that would be potentially giving our money back to Active Travel England but I that think we need to do justice by our residents.”
Hannah Young, the council’s executive member for highways and transport and herself a Clevedon councillor elected in May, said that she would bring the suggestion to the director of place but said: “I don’t believe myself that it is the right thing to do at this point.
“And I don’t think it would be a good use of resource at this point given that we would be going against the recommendations of the review to do so.”
She said: “I think what we are trying to do is to remain true to the spirit of the review and that has had a broad range of views within it and I think to then do a piece of work on full revision would go outside the boundaries of what we said we would do.”
The changes proposed by the review would keep the road as oneway and, although restoring much of the diagonal parking, it would still have a smaller amount of parking than there had been before the scheme was carried out. No changes are also proposed to the scheme on Hill Road in the review.
The scheme was funded by Active Travel England and Ms Young said the council would engage in “active dialogue” with them about whether making changes to the scheme would mean the more than £1m spent on making the scheme would need to be returned. She said: “That very much depends on what happens next.”
The executive meeting opened with addresses from members of the public, including Clevedon resident Nick Wring, who called for the council to reverse the scheme and put it back as it was. He said: “There was nothing wrong before, but endless issues now that need addressing.”
He slammed the review as “a poorly produced report from an inexperienced consultant totally out of tune with our area who cherry-picked the feedback from 2,000 plus submissions” and criticised the culture within the council’s senior officials as lacking accountability.
Council leader Mike Bell said: “Everybody understands the anger and frustration and disappointment that there has been with this package and the challenges that have existed over many months.”
But he added: “I have seen no evidence that anybody acted with anything other than the best of intentions with delivering this project.”
He said: “We are a learning organisation and part of the reason why we committed to the independent review ... is that we want to learn and do better in the future. We are never going to be an organisation that makes no mistakes and I am sure that none of us are individuals who never make mistakes.
“But what is important is that you reflect on the mistakes that you make and you address them and do things differently going forward so I have got every confidence in all of those who were involved in this project, even if I didn’t always agree with some of the decisions and actions that were taken.”
Clevedon West councillor Luke Smith said: “I think most people agree active travel has got to happen but the schemes have got to be sensible; they have got to be done properly. And the fundamental here is it wasn’t sensible and it wasn’t done properly.”
Although a decision on making major changes to the scheme will be made in March, the council executive did agree at the December 6 meeting to make smaller changes recommended in a road safety audit.