Residents have recently contacted the FOCUS team after a particular nasty accident that took place in Mill Lane. The driver concerned, we understand, was driving whilst very drunk.

Jill, Alan and Hamish fully sympathise with local residents regarding both the traffic speeding perceived, poor visibility at road junctions, and chronic parking situation in Mill Lane.

However for newer residents of the area it may be worth our recapping on the recent history on these topics.

The residents in the Mill Lane area were consulted by the local council over its proposals for traffic calming and road humps some three years ago in 2008 and the local residents then turned down the proposals, which is of course why there are no road humps or other trqaffic calming measures in place.

We think it is unlikely that there would be any fresh proposals from the Council for traffic calming/road humps in that Mill Lane for some time to come, bearing in mind the last rejection of the previous detailed proposals, and also that the thinking from the new central Government is seemingly that road humps are becoming less effective in dealing with slowing down larger passenger vehicles such as “4 x 4s” also known as “Chelsea Tractors” etc. etc.

Many local councillors would generally resist the further loss of any parking spaces other than at street junctions (where there are yellow lines already) as there are already huge shortages of parking in the North Street/Mill Lane area, and more and more residents are car owners these days.

The Council provided in around 2002 or 2003 some additional residents’ parking in bays on the south side of Mill Lane which made the road a bit wider along the middle section.  This was much welcomed by residents at the time.

Jill, Alan and Hamish are in regular close contact with the local police’s safer neighbourhood team and we have informed them of the details that we received about the recent nasty accident.