"Hilltop Co-Design Workshop"
The Council seem to have adopted the name used by the pro Mini Holland group, Hilltop Community to describe Howard, Falmer, Hurst, Seaford, Rectory Roads and The Drive. Can anyone think of a better one for us to use?
Despite the valiant opposition that residents have put up over the years against having these roads blocked off in any way it seems as if the Council is never going to stop until we ENJOY our area in the way they think best for us.
There is a small group of residents called Hilltop Community who DO want to close roads, and they have been “working with the Council” to try to get previous decisions by residents over-ruled. To that end they organised a “consultation” on 24th September. The session was described as the "Hilltop Co-Design Workshop". It was led by Chris Proctor, who leads the Mini-Holland team at the Council, and Kate who is the Engagement Officer for what the Council is pleased to call “Enjoy”
As usual, the methodology favoured the able-bodied, the young and the digitally connected. We were asked to book a ticket via Eventbrite; which is a way of collecting all our data. Although many people are familiar with Eventbrite we know that lots of people in our roads do not even have computers let alone know how to use online booking systems. Those people are the very ones who are most opposed to road closures because they are most dependent on visitors, carers, taxis, rapid response ambulances and other vehicles that are delayed and inconvenienced by road closures. The event was held in a hall outside of the so-called Hilltop area, making it even more problematic for elderly and others to get there.
At the event they used a clicker system which again was not easy for some people to grasp.. Each person had a keypad, and for each question presented you keyed the digit representing your response to the question. If you didn't want to offer a view, you didn't key anything. However the resulting percentages ignored these abstentions. So people were asked about their concerns with volume and speed of traffic, road safety, pedestrian and cyclist safety, appearance etc. We know from past experience how LBWF frames their questions and twists responses to get the result they want.
Although we know from our members that there is strong feeling against road closures in this area, the feedback from the Sep/Oct 2015 consultation in the area was described as "mixed”. The current proposals are:-
Workshop
Early 2020 – public consultation
May 202 – possible construction
It is therefore essential that WFS4A starts to campaign as soon as possible once again to stop our roads being closed. During this time the Council will need to issue Traffic Orders (TOs) for whatever they are planning with an opportunity to object. We need to watch out for those.
The discussion then moved to “general ideas for improvement”. The MH team as usual kept talking about “modal filters” and were not best pleased when one of our members said “Can’t you just be honest and call them road closures”? Many of those present seemed to have voted that “modal filters” would answer all their previous concerns about volume of traffic.
Although the Council collected data on age, sex and street where you live this data is NOT to be revealed to us apparently under GDPR legislation.
The workshop then split into groups to use stickers and notes according to various objectives. One of these was “reducing non-local traffic” which WFS4A has always argued is a ridiculous objective. Traffic necessarily needs to travel to other places.
LBWF had already also made the decision that Howard Road should be one-way from Seaford Rd to Forest Rd which aroused strong feelings in the room.
Let us know if you want to help campaign against this renewed attempts to spend money on streets which are perfectly satisfactory as they are. Email infowfstreets4all@gmail.com.
