[30-5-2024 – Updated to include public feedback on the parking issues]
Following on from the HCS public meeting at St. Faith’s in March 2024, the planning application for the demolition of the Bulbeck Road car park has been attracting the interest of the public.
Now that the local elections are behind us and a new elected Council is in place, what happens next will test both the new HBC approach to Town Centre regeneration and the approach to be taken for engagement with the resident stakeholder community.
The Bulbeck Road ‘Meridian Centre’ car park is now up for a quick sale via a ‘sealed bid’ auction, with offers invited by the bid deadline of 12 noon, Wednesday 10 July. We wish HBC well with the deal since the car park was never ideally sited, doesn’t cover its costs, and in recent years, has become a hotbed of antisocial behaviour in the town centre.
Assuming the sale proceeds on plan and the planning application for demolition makes its way through the Planning Committee stages without issue, then HCS will be keeping a close eye on the future development plans for the site. While the demolition planning application is marked for a ‘delegated decision’, we would not be surprised to see it ‘called in’ to the Planning Committee by ward councillors given long-standing public concerns over town centre parking.
The town centre parking issues
Let’s start with the Bulbeck Road car park and the immediate surrounding area, including Homewell. Council officers have previously said that the multi-storey car park isn’t being used to any great extent at the moment so we sent our roving photographer over to take a look.
This is how things looked at midday on Wednesday 29 May 2024:
Homewell residents tell us that the HCC Parking Enforcement Officers are ‘doing a far better job’ than the previous HBC regime. The motorcycle officer is especially seen as a useful deterrent in the town centre area. While we had previously seen complaints of an ‘over-zealous’ attitude to locals trying to load / unload at their own homes, the wider view is more nuanced. The officers do allow loading and unloading for residents and trades people, but abuse from some large van drivers in Homewell square has required them to issue tickets, an action which the residents clearly support.
The officers have also tried to stop the regular flow of fast-food delivery motorcyclists using the ‘prohibited to motorcycles’ short cut through part of Homewell which is described as ‘an accident waiting to happen’. As a concession, the officers turn a blind eye to parking by these delivery drivers in Bulbeck Road while they’re picking-up their loads. The concern is that these drivers would simply move to Homewell Square once the carpark is demolished.
As a general observation, the Bulbeck Road car park is currently used by many residents, both during the day and overnight, with parents from further afield in the borough using the site for temporary parking while dropping-off and picking-up pupils from Bosmere School, nearby.
Before the demolition is permitted, consideration must be given to how to accommodate these users.
As an aside, the impact of fast-food delivery traffic on the town centre is not a new subject, as our ‘Dominos’ post from December 2018 shows. Perhaps the new Local Plan could define a suitable location for ‘dark kitchen’ units, away from the town centre restaurants and residential properties, to handle this consumer demand? The Local Plan team could also take the opportunity of blowing the dust off the Havant Healthy Borough Assessment.
The wider parking concerns
When Wayne Layton presented the case for demolition to the HCS Public Forum, the wider public concern voiced in the meeting over town centre parking seemed to come as a surprise.
There is a wider parking problem which affects those streets within a fifteen minute walk of the rail and bus stations, and that is the issue of long-term, out-of-town commuter parking.
There are (at least) two perspectives on this. The viewpoint of town centre residents who live in residential streets with off-road parking or garages, and that of the residents of (mainly terraced) properties who have no alternative but to park on the street. All residents with currently unrestricted parking outside their houses would like to claim the right to park outside their properties, while some – for example in West Street – have no choice in the matter. What appears to be a common problem is that rail commuters are actually staking that claim first, despite the fact that there is usually ample space available in the local station car parks.
To avoid long-term parking charges at the Havant Station car parks, a number of commuters are parking their cars on the residential streets of the town during the week while they commute to London and elsewhere, sometimes for several days at a time. At the same time, inbound rail commuters are known to leave ‘old bangers’ overnight and over the weekend, picking them up on arrival at Havant Station to drive onwards to their places of work. Often this set of out-of-town commuters live or work in Portsmouth, where the railway stations are surrounded by restricted, ‘residents only’ street parking.
This has actually been going on for years, originally exploiting what was then free overnight and weekend parking in the Havant town centre car parks. Since overnight and weekend parking became chargeable, this casual commuter parking has moved on to the residential streets.
The need for a Havant Town Centre residents’ parking scheme
One way of managing the commuter parking issues would be to implement a residents’ parking scheme similar to that adopted by Portsmouth City Council. There are no windscreen stickers involved, the parking enforcement officers simply patrol the streets, scanning the registrations of parked vehicles and issuing parking infringements to those which are not registered on their database. Registration would be by proof of residential address and payment of an annual fee, which in Portsmouth’s case is scaled, based on the number of vehicles belonging to a household.
While some might protest at having to pay an annual charge for local on-street parking, the benefit from clearing their streets of free-loading commuters might be seen as a reasonable price to pay. It could actually be the existence of these restrictions around the Portsmouth railway stations that cause outbound commuters to drive to Havant for ‘free’ station parking on our local streets.
All it would take is for Havant Borough Council officers to work hand-in-hand with their opposite numbers at Hampshire County Council. Note: Chichester District Council maintains an equivalent residents parking scheme with West Sussex County Council.
While it could take a lengthy period of consultation to set up a comprehensive scheme in Havant, there is no technical reason why an interim solution could not be set up reasonably quickly as part of the town centre regeneration programme. A single, tactical, ‘Town Centre’ parking scheme could be set up, covering a selected set of residential streets with a common time limit for non-residents of, perhaps, ‘two hours parking with no return within two hours’.
With a simple solution to getting out-of-town parking off the town centre residential streets, some of the heat might be taken out of public concern over the demolition of the Bulbeck Road car park.
#rethinkhavant
Havant Civic Society 