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Graham, Tom and Ian
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Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
What were the local issues four decades ago?
Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
Keith secures date for Cheadle parking meeting
by Lib Dem team on 26 January, 2016
Cllr Keith Holloway has secured a date for a public meeting to look at parking in Cheadle village, and everyone is invited: traders, shoppers, residents and workers.
The meeting will be on Wednesday 10th February 2016 from 7pm to 8pm at the Upper Rooms, Cheadle (above Tesco). It will be a workshop format because we believe we can get the best outcome if everyone works together to come up with solutions that work for as many people as possible.
Council officers will also be attending. Unfortunately Iain has other commitments so can’t make it (but it was important to have the meeting as early as possible). Keith will be there to lead the meeting.
7 Comments
Will there be parking if I want to attend ?
Keith,
I was shopping in Cheadle a couple of days ago chatting to a couple of our local traders and their customers. To say they are furious at the lack of action from you and Iain with regard to the car park situation is an understatement. The lack of short term parking for customers is having a severe impact on their turnover and will I think result in closures if quick action is not forthcoming.
I personally hate the idea of Post It style meetings/workshop meetings but if facilitated extremely well I suppose they can sometimes be useful but only if they result in quick action following them. But given the large amount of feedback that has already taken place and the fact that nothing has changed to date the signs are not good. Why not have one part of the meeting for traders to feed back one part for customers and from that agree some actions to be taken forward back to the council for implementation? Every week that goes by makes is very unfair on the traders.
I tried to park for over 20 minutes in Cheadle this morning. I gave up and went to Tesco. The following shops missed out on my business for my weekly shop (which I try and do locally): Greengrocer, fishmonger, butcher, Co-op and Savers. I had to walk back in this afternoon to collect my glasses from the optician. How long are the Councillors going to allow this to happen? Do the shops have to go out of business first?
Hi Karen – that’s why we’re having the meeting – to find fixes! It’s not an easy problem, and different people will have different views, but we’re determined to make parking easier for shoppers.
Peter – given all the work we’ve put into making progress, and the many, many times we’ve updated those traders on what we’re doing, I’m disappointed that they are still claiming we’ve not done anything. It’s one of those issues that we can do better on if we all work together rather than attacking each other.
No-one has ever disputed there being a problem – the challenge is what we can do that will actually improve it – and the obvious answers may not be the ones that work – we need to look at the evidence.
We’ve taken action already and there is work underway to free to up spaces, but we need to do more.
Here’s the fix – the planning permission that has been granted by the local authority to used the wasteland off Manchester Road by the Alexandra Hospital, has to be used for not just hospital staff. Similar mutually beneficial parking schemes are in force in London and other, quite smaller, European cities; car parks used at key times for hospital staff, patients, visitors etc. and then outside of these key timings, ie: weekends, local traders apply for a parking permit. Everyone wins; low cost, affordable parking for local traders, supplementary income to the hospital, eases spaces at weekends (key shopping date, in particular Saturdays) for shoppers. It’s a no brainer and I’ll setting up committee to challenge the planning that has been passed unduly.
Hi Shelley – the plan from BMI has always been to use the parking not only for Alex staff and patients but also for the BMI Finance people who currently work on Eden Place and park in the village. One thing we’ve already said we’re keen to look at (and have started) is seeing if the private car parks around the village centre can also be used for all-day parking for people who work in the village.