Monday, October 09, 2006
27/01/2006 Welcome for Salisbury Civic Society Report
27th January 2006
Cllr Paul Sample, Salisbury District Council for St Edmund and Milford North, attended the launch of Salisbury Civic Society’s “Streets for All” (www.salisburycivicsociety.org.uk) document last night and welcomed the document at the meeting:
“The Civic Society is to be congratulated for undertaking this survey. I agree with about 85% of their recommendations. But not all of them. There are two issues where I take issue with Civic Society:
Firstly, many of the improvements they have asked for will cost a great deal to achieve. They make no suggestions as to where the additional funds might come from. I don’t think it would be right for the money to come out of the schools budget, or the care budgets for elderly and disabled people. So where would it come from? If the Civic Society’s proposals are ever to be put into practice, they need either to campaign for more government funding, a fairer system of local taxation or an increase in the Council Tax.
Secondly, they highlight a number of items of street furniture which they say are displeasing to the eye. They cite, for instance, bollards in Guilder Lane and Pennyfarthing Street and ask for them to be removed. But the reason these bollards have been put into place is because local residents were walking out of their front doors onto the pavement and into the path of cars which were driving on the pavement. In some cases cars were being parked in such a way that residents couldn’t get out of their front doors at all. This had to be stopped and the bollards do that very effectively.
“Just because the Civic Society doesn’t understand why a piece of street furniture in place, doesn’t mean to say that there isn’t a perfectly good reason. All they had to do was to knock on a few doors and ask the opinions of the local residents.”
Cllr Paul Sample, Salisbury District Council for St Edmund and Milford North, attended the launch of Salisbury Civic Society’s “Streets for All” (www.salisburycivicsociety.org.uk) document last night and welcomed the document at the meeting:
“The Civic Society is to be congratulated for undertaking this survey. I agree with about 85% of their recommendations. But not all of them. There are two issues where I take issue with Civic Society:
Firstly, many of the improvements they have asked for will cost a great deal to achieve. They make no suggestions as to where the additional funds might come from. I don’t think it would be right for the money to come out of the schools budget, or the care budgets for elderly and disabled people. So where would it come from? If the Civic Society’s proposals are ever to be put into practice, they need either to campaign for more government funding, a fairer system of local taxation or an increase in the Council Tax.
Secondly, they highlight a number of items of street furniture which they say are displeasing to the eye. They cite, for instance, bollards in Guilder Lane and Pennyfarthing Street and ask for them to be removed. But the reason these bollards have been put into place is because local residents were walking out of their front doors onto the pavement and into the path of cars which were driving on the pavement. In some cases cars were being parked in such a way that residents couldn’t get out of their front doors at all. This had to be stopped and the bollards do that very effectively.
“Just because the Civic Society doesn’t understand why a piece of street furniture in place, doesn’t mean to say that there isn’t a perfectly good reason. All they had to do was to knock on a few doors and ask the opinions of the local residents.”
