Council consults on changes to parking restrictions

The long-running saga of parking restrictions in East Wichel took another turn yesterday when Swindon Borough Council published its latest proposals for a Restricted Parking Zone in East Wichel. The arguments over parking in East Wichel have now been running for three years. The latest changes proposed are:

• 43 extra parking spaces on East Wichel Way;
• 18 extra parking spaces on wider side roads;
• 54 extra parking spaces on narrower side roads;
• including the mews areas in the parking restrictions;
• average of 1 extra parking space per mews;
• a 3.5 tonne weight limit for all public parking spaces.

Excluding the extra spaces that might be available in the mews — which appear not to have been fully surveyed yet — the proposals would add 61 to 115 extra parking spaces, depending on whether the parking spaces on narrower streets are included. This would almost double the number of parking spaces available.

The proposals show that on East Wichel Way parking would be permitted on alternate sides for each block, to fit in with the proposed bus priority scheme. The proposals also include parking adjacent to East Wichel’s two greens, a place where most residents have avoided parking even whilst the restrictions have been relaxed.

Including the mews areas in the restrictions is a reversion to what was originally proposed in 2014, but dropped during the early consultation. The extra spaces would be in addition to the spaces already allocated to specific house owners and tenants though, worryingly for house owners that thought they owned a parking space, the plans seem uncertain as to what areas are privately owned, despite a council officer saying at a community meeting in 2014 that it was easy to tell the privately owned areas from the communal parts of the mews.

Full details of the proposals are available on Swindon Borough Council’s website. There will also be a drop-in session with council officers at the StoweAway community centre on Wednesday this week, between 2 pm and 8 pm. Comments on the proposals can be submitted either at that session or online through the council’s website. The deadline for comments is less than two weeks away on Friday 30 June.