Mike Stonard, the leader of Labour-led Norwich City Council, gives his views on Conservative-controlled Norfolk County Council ending the divisive pedestrianisation of Exchange Street.
People care deeply about how their streets and public spaces are used. Norwich’s marketplace and its connecting streets are known, used and loved by people throughout the city and county.
At the city council, we feel that decisions about streets and movement should be made in public, after proper debate and scrutiny.
Norfolk County Council has decided to let vehicles drive through the marketplace and down Exchange Street. This important decision was made without public scrutiny after the committee that gave the city’s councillors a say was scrapped.
This is what I would have said at that committee, had it been allowed to meet.
Norwich city centre is a success. That success has been based on years of work to make the streets comfortable places to walk, ride a bike and socialise through careful design and sensible traffic restraint.
This has been achieved while also ensuring that sufficient, well-planned and signed parking remains available to motorists. Who would let traffic drive down London Street, Westlegate or St George’s Street now?
At that imagined committee meeting, I would have expressed surprise because I thought the county council shared this vision of prosperity and wanted those benefits to extend to Exchange Street and the Market Place.
Why?
Because last year they supported our proposals which were agreed through the Greater Norwich Growth Board for £2.7m from our shared pot of community infrastructure levy funding to be used to deliver a redesign that would have supported street life and eliminated illegal driving.
I was delighted when they allocated £100,000 of their own money to the scheme and produced some of the analysis that demonstrated its benefits.
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Rather than investing in the city centre to help it thrive, as we are doing in Hay Hill, the cafe enclosures and planters on Exchange Street will now be ripped out and people will be forced back onto the narrow pavements.
At the committee, I would have urged my fellow councillors not to give in to those who feel it is acceptable to ignore multiple signs saying that they are entering a pedestrian and cycle zone.
I have read in the news this week that the county council is using its new powers to install a camera to enforce the traffic rules that help Gentleman's Walk to thrive. I would have said in committee that I was baffled by the suggestion that persistent flouting of the rules meant Exchange Street had to be reopened when another camera on the same pole could have solved the problem.
I would have also expressed my gratitude to the police whose enforcement action earlier this year has massively cut the numbers breaching the restrictions, making the figures on which county’s decision is based out of date.
I would have asked why no data has been presented to support the case that the current arrangements are unsafe and questioned how allowing hundreds of vehicles a day to drive through an area packed with people will make them safer.
I would have appealed for consistent decision-making rather than U-turns.
Permanent traffic restraint in Exchange Street was agreed by the previous conservative administration at County Hall in January 2022 but the legal order that followed was experimental rather than permanent, leading to this U-turn.
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The county’s decision report says the decision is finely balanced. This means that if any of the facts or arguments used to let traffic back in are flawed then a different decision should be made. They are flawed and a different decision should be made. It is not too late.
We need to reinvigorate our ambition and vision for the future of the city centre and work together to achieve it.
We have achieved so much for the good of residents and businesses in the past by working in partnership, despite our party-political differences. I am sure we can do so again.
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