Speaking at the Environment and Neighbourhoods Committee on 13 June Richard welcomed progress on agreeing a structure of incentives to persuade Brighton Road car park users to move to Gibson Road if the car park closes. Currently, Subsea7 are applying for planning permission to build a new international headquarters (see above) on the site.

Richard pointed out that this development will safeguard several hundred jobs currently in Sutton that were likely to move elsewhere, and bring a further three to four hundred jobs into Sutton South Ward. These new jobs are good news for Sutton.

This development will create jobs, not just for engineers but a range of less skilled jobs (clerks, receptionists, cleaners, messengers, drivers etc.). This site is surrounded by areas of social housing where we meet, in our casework, people who are out of work and whose lives would be transformed by finding work. Every day we open the newspaper and see news of more redundancies nationwide – but Richard and Heather can speak of securing an extra 300 plus jobs in our Ward. The development will also give an uplift to the area, the Gateway to Sutton from the south, with office workers and the company’s clients spending money in local shops, restaurants and hotels, creating further jobs.

But the second message is that to deal with local concerns about parking in local streets if the car park closes, we need to persuade the users of the Brighton Road car park to use the town centre car parks, which have the capacity. The average weekday demand at peak occupancy of the car park is about 380 vehicles and 320 have season tickets. So the season ticket holders are key.   

The first and most important element in the strategy is a financial discount to persuade people to move. The discount proposed by the Committee, as a recommendation to the Strategy and Resources Committee, says to the season ticket holders “move to Gibson Road and you will pay, for the first year, what you paid last year less 10% – unless, you already have a discount, in which case it continues. This is to compensate you for the inconvenience of moving and to provide an incentive to move to Gibson Road”.

We hope this will persuade people to move, to a car park which is no more than seven minutes walk away.

The further element of the strategy is improvements in respect of signage to the car parks (including electronic signs indicating what number spaces are available) and improvements in access, in particular enabling those leaving Gibson Road to avoid the town centre one way system.

We hope this proposed substantial discount will achieve the right result, so that we will be able to secure the major advantage of the new jobs while coping with the reduction in parking space. The structure of discounts will, however, be further considered by the Strategy and Resources Committee.

Previous posts on this site have described how Richard and Heather presented a petition to Sutton Council last July on speeding in Cavendish Road. This led to the biggest speeding survey ever in our Ward, and to agreement on width restrictions to reduce speeding at two points in Cedar Road and two points in Cavendish Road.

In addition we have proposed and obtained funding for additional “20 mph” roundels to be painted on roads within the South Sutton 20mph area. This will enable the Council to put 20 mph “roundels” on the road at the east end of Cavendish Road to match those at the west end. There have always been roundels at the west end, so drivers know it is a 20mph zone they are entering. At the east end there is no roundel as the driver is already in a 20 mph zone and the law said the roundels could only be placed at the entry point to the zone. A recent change in the law means the roundels can now be displayed within the zone to re-enforce the message. We hope to have additional roundels at several points within the 20mph zone to re-enforce the message that you are in such a zone.

We are convinced this will help with the speeding problem in Cavendish Road, and elsewhere in the 20mph zone.

On the morning of 10 January Richard and Heather met some local residents and the Council’s traffic engineers at the Kings Lane bridge to inspect the proposed works and discuss the practicalities of implementation.

Following discussions wth residents, the original proposal to build out the kerb on both sides at the Hillcroome Road end (shown above) has been reduced, with a bollard and kerb build out on the left hand side in the above picture. However, there will be hatching on the road which will have the effect of moving traffic to a more central position. The overall effect will be to make the traffic coming from the Hillcroome Road end more visible to pedestrians on the bridge, and motorists will see pedestrians earlier. The signage will be replaced and improved.

Work will commence during January and there will be a traffic light system on the bridge during the period of the works.

We see this as a small but useful safety improvement.