Current Issues
Car Parking
2 December 2009
EGBA has, through the Mid Sussex Alliance of Business Associations, obtained the agreement of the Leadership of MSDC that car parking is one of the four priority issues that need to be considered jointly with the Alliance over the next twelve months.
The Leadership agreed that, to make a contribution on an informed basis, the members of the Alliance needed to have seen and studied the feedback data available from the machines on the usage and income generated from each of the car parks over the last two years.
Councillor Gary Wall, who until November was the Cabinet Member within MSDC responsible for the car parks has now become the new Leader of the Council and Councillor Pru Moore takes over responsibility for leisure and outdoor services…..including parking. While she will need a little time to pick up her portfolio, we will now have a Leader familiar with the dimensions of the parking issues.
MSDC have meantime appointed a consultant to assist them and are busy drafting the “terms of reference” for a working group that is guiding work on a new car parking strategy. It is therefore clear that this issue is being given their full attention at this moment in time.
Loyalty Cards
27 November 2009
We are coming to the end of November and that is the best time to revamp our Loyalty Card offers in time for the critical Christmas Shopping weeks leading up to the holiday. If we all catch the shopping public’s attention with some imaginative and eye catching offers - all under the banner of the town’s Loyalty Card, then we could all significantly benefit in the level of sales we achieve in this critical month.
Can we persuade you all to pull together and create a renewed Loyalty Card initiative by renewing your offers, displaying them prominently, having spare cards available in your dispenser and generally raising the Card’s profile again in a real attempt to benefit us all. If the offer you have is well conceived and eye catching, it will work for you anyway. But if everyone acting together can create an overall effect in the town, then we will all benefit significantly.
Additional cards can be collected from Threadneedles in the High Street, and notification of new offers for inclusion on the Town Council website under “keep it local” should be sent to Simon Kerr tourism@eastgrinstead.gov.uk
Mid-Sussex Business Association Alliance
24 November 2009
The Alliance is an informal association of the four Business Associations of the three Mid Sussex towns of Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath and East Grinstead. It has been formed for them to act together where their interests and aspirations are in common, and to assist the District Council by presenting a single entity and perspective with which to work in the best interests of the community.
At a meeting with the Mid Sussex District Council Leadership at the end of October it was agreed to meet at six monthly intervals, to agree and review the three or four priority issues that the Council and the Alliance should be working on in partnership towards agreed solutions where possible.
The four immediate priority issues were agreed as:-
· Development, with business, of a District Council economic development strategy (EDS) for the next five years.
· An agreed tariff structure for the Council’s car parks that meets the priorities of the Council and the town centre businesses.
· Promotion of the three town centres as attractive places to both visit and to shop.
· Develop an inward investment strategy for each town and the rural communities on a suitably integrated basis for the District as a whole.
Work is already underway with the District Council's economic development team on developing and agreed EDS for the District Council.
MSDC Core Strategy Consultation
24 November 2009
There have been delays in the production of the Proposed Core Strategy Submission Document which had been intended to be available for consultation through November and December. It would appear that further consideration of the proposals concerning housing, the three town chapters and employment are still needed, and these will not now be ready until into the new year.
The document excluding these three dimensions, will be finally agreed and then approved in November and December, with the three problem areas being cleared in January. So the programme for consultation with the three Town Councils is now due to take place in February and March.
This would then mean:-
a) Submission to the Secretary of State ……….. June 2010
b) Examination…………………………………. .October 2010
c) Inspector’s report……………………………...April/May 2011
d) Adoption……………………………………….June 2011
EGBA, the PRC and the Town Council are keeping in touch as things develop, and to the extent that all
three continue to hold shared views on the key issues they will present a common front in support of the
town’s interests.
Traffic Congestion
24 November 2009
Demise of the Relief Road
Since it became apparent early this year that the “relief road” solution, funded by a major strategic housing development west of the town, was no longer viable due to the recession forcing the construction consortium to withdraw their offer, the EGBA, at the behest of its members, took upon itself to explore what alternatives might be possible.
The “relief road” option had made it clear that any solution, to have a half sensible time scale, must avoid encroaching into Surrey and East Sussex. Getting three county authorities to agree on any such scheme is clearly a political nightmare.
It is also clear to anyone that you can solve a traffic problem many ways if as a community you are prepared to accept the costs they impose, and clearly these costs come in many guises. For instance there is financial cost, and in this particular time of recession that might be really difficult. But there are other costs as well which we identified as:-
i) Community cost - the down side impact on a part of the community from putting in a new road, or creating a one-way system, or imposing a complicated road junction all for the benefit of the greater community, even accepting there might be some financial compensation.
ii) Health and Safety cost - the down side of speeding-up traffic flows which then leads to the need for traffic calming or expensive protected pedestrian crossings.
iii) Disruption cost - during installation, for how long and to what extent will the town have to suffer major disruption and increased traffic chaos.
iv) Political cost - the inevitable cost to an elected authority of undertaking something that will be unattractive to a part of the community, and which will engender some degree of opposition.
v) Social cost - the degree to which any such scheme will impact for the worse the character and attractiveness of a part of the town and damage its heritage.
Conducting a Trial run to Better Understand WSCC Response?
The Executive Committee decided to prepare and put forward the best version of such a solution that it could devise to the County Council in an attempt to better understand how such potential solutions are considered and evaluated. Clearly, to be adopted, any such solution must provide sufficient traffic benefit to justify what is also seen to be the most acceptable balance of all these costs.
At a most informative meeting with a senior representative of the Council’s transport planning department towards the end of September the strengths and weaknesses of this proposal were discussed. Our understanding was that for delivering increased traffic capacity it scored well, and for financial and disruption cost it was attractive. However it presented some concern on health and safety grounds and was of sufficient concern on the social and community front to make render it in effect unacceptable for any elected authority to adopt.
The verdict of the professionals, the transport planners rather than the elected councillors, was also relevant. Nowadays, these traffic problems are considered to be multi-dimensional problems that require multi-dimensional solutions. You cannot just treat them as traffic problems caused by an inadequate road layouts. Catering for ever more cars gets the community into deeper trouble - better to persuade people to change their habits by sharing transport, using alternative transport systems or working and shoping locally.
What is the Council’s Solution?
The Council proposes to improve the five road junctions on the A22 between the A264 junction at Felbridge in the north and Moat Road junction to Tunbridge Wells in the south. Details of these proposals, based on work by consultant Atkins, are on the WSCC website, and there is a clear appraisal and summary by our Town Council’s consultant MTRU on the Town Council’s website. Our understanding of what this will provide, if adopted, is achieving something approaching a 5% traffic reduction as set against a predicted progressive 18% traffic increase between now and 2026 on the A22. And it should be recognised that it will take some 5 years to implement these junction improvements during which time the traffic capacity will be significantly reduced as against its current situation today.
WSCC accept that to keep the traffic density at to-days level, will require successful initiatives towards a modal change in transport habits, enhanced public transport, and making all future housing developments either car reduced if not car free. These, if both well set-up and positively managed, will not effect significant change on the ground within perhaps 5 or maybe 10 years.
What does that Mean?
Well, our interpretation of this is that:-
i) Traffic congestion will continue increasingly to restrict development in the Town.
ii) It will ultimately create a development ceiling.
iii) Economic vitality will be curtailed.
iv) Local employment will stagnate.
What Else can be Done?
We asked WSCC whether other direct solutions existed that, unlike ours, might be politically acceptable and provide some time within which to effect the modal change in transport behaviour that they were looking for.
The answer was that this was a fair question, seeing as it is now some 12 years since the “relief road” option put a halt to all other investigations. We were advised that WSCC would investigate whether there was mileage in employing a consultant to do a further study, and they would come back to us in the very near future with an answer.
Failing that, we debated with our Chairman, Nicholas Soames, what else we could do, and whether this was a predicament peculiar to East Grinstead. His views were typically positive and forthright. Clearly this is an increasingly familiar problem for many towns in England, and particularly the South East. If you can’t find a solution by conventional means then you have to think “outside the box”. And who best to consult on such remedies ? Well the universities have always been the intellectual hot-houses for conducting research and for coming-up with innovative thinking, and new ideas. Find the three or four leading “urban and transport planning” faculties in the country, and see what they can offer by way of research or innovative thinking.
Next Step?
We await the response from WSCC regarding the viability of a further consultant’s review of any potential existing “direct solutions”, and in the meantime will review which universities might be best qualified to take on an assignment to solve our town’s traffic predicament, now of some 50 years standing.
Economic Development Strategy
24 November 2009
The EGBA is currently working as a member of the Mid Sussex Alliance of Business Associations together with the MSDC economic development team to develop an EDS for the District Council.
The first draft has identified the agreed key objectives as;-
- i) Provision of suitable employment land and floorspace to meet the needs of existing and future employment growth.
- ii) Promotion of the town centres for shopping, leisure, visitors and employment.
- iii) Promotion of a healthy rural economy.
- iv) Promotion of a strong visitor and tourism economy.
- v) Promotion of Inward Investment.
- vi) Provision of skills and to meet the requirements the future economy.
- vii) Support and assist the County Council's transport and traffic initiatives and strategy.
Recognising that the strategy will be judged solely by the actions it achieves, the next round of identifying the key actions by which to realise these objectives will be critical.
New Committee Members
17 November 2009
New Committee
The composition of the Association's Executive Committee in 2010, as announced at the AGM will be:-
Name Company
Russell Shenton Omicron
Darren Charteris Thermo Fisher Scientific
Charmaine Hallmark Hallmark Travel
Brian Combe Tax Assist Accountants
Graham Stevens Graham Stevens Gallery
The final appointment will be announced within November/December.
The current composition of the Three Sectional Sub-Committees is as follows:-
Business Section
Russell Shenton, Omicron
Darren Charteris, Thermo Fisher Scientific
Richard Mower, Cresta Building Ltd.
Service Section
Charmaine Hallmark, Hallmark Travel
Brian Combe, Tax Assist Accountants
Dale Bulbrook, Webdesigns
Elaine McGloin, Elaine McGloin Solicitors
James McClaren-Rowe, Amadeus
Richard Blackburn, Circlesquare
Ian Porter, Lloyds TSB
Retail Section
Graham Stevens, Graham Stevens Gallery
Debby Coghill, The Jewellery Workshop
Carole Weighill, Threadneedles
Derek Borer, Sainsbury
Nick Hubsh, Tree Frog
Karin Chesworth-Towel, Boots
Terry Fell. Wolfcat Computers
Rupert Simpson, Waitrose