Portsmouth City Council decide fate of the Bramble Road area at one-off traffic meeting after the unpopular introduction of residents parking zones

Here are the decisions that were made at the ‘one-off’ Traffic and Transportation meeting regarding the fate of Bramble Road and the surrounding roads - Shanklin Road, Ventnor Road and Talbot Road.

Portsmouth City Council held the meeting on Monday, 12 June and all three Central Southsea Ward Lib Dem councillors attended it.

They heard that over 200 people have requested a parking permit scheme in that area despite not being formally consulted. There have been three petitions and many houses in that area are displaying a poster in their windows in support of a scheme.

Because of the overwhelming public support, the decision was made to go ahead with a survey in these roads to enable residents to decide if they would like to have a residents parking permit scheme.

The proposed North Kings parking scheme (covering Havelock, Lorne, Livingstone and Outram area) is much further ahead than the Bramble Road area meaning that there will be a period of around 3 months where residents will be in the parking permit sandwich discussed in my earlier blog.

The councillors said it would not be possible to bring the new schemes forward as there are statutory processes to be followed.  

The costs of implementing the MB Orchard Road scheme - the initial trigger for the displacement of cars into Bramble, Ventnor, Shanklin and Talbot - was £45,000. To implement the new zones if residents opt ‘yes’ in the proposed survey would cost a further £90,000.

The council have decided to survey the residents with the prospect of creating two new zones roughly the same size as the Orchard Road scheme to tackle the problems caused by its implementation back in November last year.

My thoughts on the meeting:

• What a waste of money the initial MB Orchard Road scheme was!
• Fighting fire with fire? Is it time to admit defeat and scrap the residents parking permit scheme altogether?
•  If you survey roads with no problem they will vote ‘no’ to a new scheme and then when they are on the edge of a zone and are suffering from displacement of cars they will want to be included. Where do you draw the line? Should the survey take into account there will always be a displacement of cars? Is it time to make the whole of Portsmouth permit only?
• At the very minimum the new North Kings scheme should be postponed until the Bramble Road area has been sorted. The solution needs to be approached in a logical manner – yes, they cannot bring the Bramble Road scheme forward but they can shelve the North Kings scheme so that all the schemes launch at the same time, avoiding any parking permit sandwich areas.