Frome Town Council voted to withdraw the residents’ permit scheme in Weymouth Road at its meeting on Wednesday 2nd October. Road markings installed as part of the scheme, such as additional double yellow lines and road markings, will remain. The scheme was installed in 2022 for an 18-month trial period, following a wider consultation in 2018, aimed at improving road safety.
Somerset councillor Martin Dimery called the scheme the ‘single most contentious issue’ he’d had to deal with as a county councillor, recognising that the decision made at the meeting would be experienced as unfair by some, whatever the outcome. FTC councillors similarly expressed a range of views, with many acknowledging that people on both sides had made valid points and that there was no easy answer.
Frome Neighbourhood Parking Group reiterated their opposition to the scheme becoming permanent at a council meeting in July. Town Clerk Paul Wynne wrote to Somerset County Council following the meeting to ask about the potential for its amendment or withdrawal. This led to the unprecedented step of the county council allowing the decision on whether to make the scheme permanent to be made at local level by FTC.
Residents both for and against spoke passionately and at length about their reasons for being in favour of and against the residents’ parking scheme. Alternatives to scrapping the scheme were suggested by some Weymouth Road residents, along with concerns that a withdrawal of permits, without the removal of the yellow lines and other restrictions installed with them, would lead to a worse situation on Weymouth Road that it had before the consultation. Those against spoke about the displacement of traffic onto neighbouring streets and cited the unfairness of one road’s problem being solved, at the expense of others. Many, including the assembled councillors, called for the town-wide parking and transport review that has been requested many times but not implemented to date.
Cllr Mel Usher said:
“Taking one street out of a scheme and giving them some preference is not going to work in any shape or form; you need a larger area than that. It occurs to me that every now and then you come across a problem to which there is no one answer. There’s no right or wrong answer to this and everybody who’s spoken has got positive points to make and all of them have got validity. I for one would prefer to be part of a council that says ‘ok, we didn’t get everything right. We might not have made the right decision in the first place, but we’d like to put it right now, rather than hiding it. I’d prefer it if there was an answer this evening, and I’ll be voting for removal.”
Cllr Polly Lamb echoed calls for further discussion, in the absence of a clear-cut answer. Cllr Nick Dove shared the frustrations of local businesses impacted by the scheme, repeated the need for a town-wide solution for traffic and parking and said he would vote against a scheme he judged ‘fundamentally unfair’.
The recommendation was carried by majority.
Watch the 2nd October Frome Town Council meeting at https://bit.ly/ftc-meeting-2nd-oct-24
