Dear Sir,
I read recently in NN an article about the damage to verges, green spaces and the congestion caused by vehicles. The councillor, after going through the obvious historical reasons, dumped the blame and solution on the general driving public and exonerated the LA.
They should take responsibility and find the solution, he said.
There are thousands of ‘dropped kerbs’ in the town, all privately funded by residents who have taken responsibility and found the solution, at a cost of £11500 cira 2022. Easing the procedure and DCC cost to install dropped kerbs might help.
The LA laid drives into properties, increasing the value of the housing stock, as a community based solution, it would have been better to use the money to cobble areas to allow cars off road parking, ref Greville Way.
What about a reduction in Council Tax to encourage people to install a dropped kerb?
As a community based solution investigate a ‘adopted a verge’ initiative, again a reduction in CT, funded by not having to repair damage caused to the verges.
How much space is wasted between vehicles, mark the kerbs to show parking bays, and reduce the distance wasted, which will increase the parking available.
These ideas might never be realised, but successive LA’s have failed to do anything at all. The Liberals manifesto promised to address this problem, not yet anyway.
Delivery vehicles are a prime example of causing damage, they are time bound to hit delivery targets, and show little regard to verge damage. Can a repair cost be claimed via their company using street cameras, dash cam etc. to identify them?
This problem is not restricted to Newton Aycliffe. Let’s have a community based working party to resolve a community based problem, instead of doing nothing.
Just a final thought, Woodham does not seem to suffer this problem!
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