SbC meets Andy Reed - our MP

SwampedbyCars meeting with Andy Reed went well, despite it being, Friday 13th November. We had previously had an exchange of letters so it was very nice to meet our MP in person. For those that haven't met him before he is young, energetic and he already has an excellent knowledge of how the excess of university cars is affecting Loughborough roads. He listened to us carefully and interjected thoughtful points and suggestions whilst being particularly fair to the University. We think our argument made an impression and our description of how the University had created some of these problems by thoughtless decision making in the past, appeared to strike home. Andy generally supported our position as it is very much in line with his own campaign for the University to reduce its carbon footprint. We pointed out that this must include the University cars outside the campus as well as actions on the campus. Andy took on board an action to contact the University to request them to play a positive role in reducing the volume of University cars coming to the town. Andy Reed will now be able to represent our views more accurately when meeting with the Borough Council and the University.
We would like to thank him, and Ian his assistant, for giving us 45 minutes of surgery time.

SbC meets Loughborough Students' Union President

Our meeting with Rob Hulme lasted just over an hour and he listened politely to our long history of complaints and petitions about excessive student parking on the roads around the University, particularly near entrances. We also discussed the more recent problem of the many student cars kept at rented properties in the town; often more than the permitted two per house allowed by the preference parking schemes. This is important because, in order to dodge the wardens, these cars are moved to residential roads next to the campus each day as they are not allowed onto university property.
Rob was concerned about our campaign and our, easy to understand slogan of 'Ban student cars'. He was anxious for us to understand that many students do have a need for cars, such as those that are disabled, those with young families, or those students who have a regular need to travel, not least the many students training in sports, particularly the disabled sportsmen and sportswomen who travel to the University each day.
In some of our documents submitted to the council we have conceded these points with the proviso that cars be registered and licenced to a property where an agreed number of student cars should not be exceeded and that the University provide parking for them during the day. At least that way, the University gets the problem if too many permissions for cars are granted, not the local residents.
The CBC investigation panel will be calling Rob to give the student point of view on car parking. We wanted to make clear that SbC ia not anti-student, just convinced there is a better way of managing all the university cars that come to the town. SbC also asked that LSU's Environment and Ethics officer be asked for an opinion on the number of student cars. SbC offered help with providing Rob with information, and best practice elsewhere, that he could use in presenting to the panel.
We wish Rob all the best for next year when he finishes as President and starts a career.

Who you going to call?

Alison Barlow is Loughborough University's Community Relations Officer and she has recently provided this information to Swamped by Cars.
If you live in the area between Forest Road and Ashby Road, from Epinal Way to Kirkstone Drive, and you are suffering from student/university parking then you can report it to our Community Support Officer, Clare Mant, by calling 0116 222222 and when prompted, key in her 'collar number' 6065. You can also e mail Clare on Clare.Mant@leicestershire.pnn.police.uk
Alison has provided our CSO with letters signed by the University's Chief Operating Officer, Will Spinks, and the letters warn parkers that they are parking in an area prohibited by regulations if they are attending or visiting the University.
Alison has also said that, if necessary, residents can also report the problem to her and she will pass on a message to Clare. Alison's number is 01509 228696 or e mail A.J.Barlow@lboro.ac.uk
If residents are suffering other kinds of nuisance, possibly out of normal working hours then the University's security office have a 24 hour contact number, 01509 222141.
Swamped by Cars has a similar warning letter that residents' can use. Contact one of the SbC organisers and they will send you a letter you can copy and use as necessary.

Our panel. Monday 12th October 2009

Our CBC Investigation panel met for the first time on Monday 12th October. For the first half hour or so the panel members, six councillors and two officers met privately before we were asked to join them. By the time the courtesies were over we had about fifty minutes to make our case. This sounds like a lot of time but with interuptions for questions and steering from the chair, Jill Vincent, the time passed too quickly. Our problem is relatively easy to explain, but it is more serious in certain places and there are problems thoughout the town, so it does take time to get to the nitty gritty. We covered ordinary parking problems, how the Traffic Exclusion Order is working, displacement parking, either from preference parking areas, or because the University won't allow town-dwelling students to park at their campus. Also there are many student houses with six cars where this causes a serious nuisance to permanent residents.

Some of the councillors are from the town and two worked at the University, so it is easier for them to understand the problem. But I could see that those councillors from outside the town were having a lot of new information to absorb. Naturally this led to questions and we lost time answering them fully. Overall I think we were given a fair hearing but there is so much information to put across we hardly got started on best practice and examples from other universities and councils. Still, we have supplied a lot of written information and a display of photographs including a number from KARG, the Kingfisher Area Residents' Group.

The panel will now go on to speak to the other parties such as the University, Students' Union and a 'club' of landlords. At some time in the future we have been promised a return visit. We will keep you posted on this site.

Just some odds and ends. Tuesday 6th October

Our review panel meets for the first time on Monday 12th October at 5pm. We have been asked to arrive at 5.30pm to go through the evidence of 'best practice' that we have collected from other universities and councils. We will keep you informed of what happens.

We reported on our objections to the University's planning application for a new Design Building that will be built on a large student car park. Nineteen other objections have been lodged with the Council, including one from Leicestershire County Council Highways Department. It raises nearly all the issues we local protesters raised and it has suggested some additional constraints on construction. We do not have a great deal of experience with the CBC Planning process, so we were a bit taken-a-back by the 21 page report presented by the Planning Officer Peter Blitz in support of the application. He introduces new material and assurances from the University, without any confirmatory paperwork from them and on which we will not have an opportunity to comment! You would think that if new material is to be introduced the decision should be to 'refer the application' so that there is chance for this new material to be scrutinised by the community. The planning meeting is on Thursday evening 8th October at 5pm in the Southfield committee rooms. This is open to the public and we will be there to see what happens and it will be reported on this site.

All students love to party; or so we are told. This evening's Leicester Mercury lets us know by exactly how much Loughborough students love to party more than most! A shocking statistic is revealed and the Mercury's is leading with this item in their editorial. Please go out and buy the Mercury, they have provided some good publicity for Swamped by Cars and I'm sure you will be interested in today's paper. See also P.18 where our friend Councillor Slater proposes a park and ride scheme for the town seeing as how Epinal Way is so blocked with slow moving traffic in term time! Well, we are trying very hard to do something about that, perhaps the park and ride won't be necessary if student cars are banned from the town.

We get a Council Investigation Panel

At the CBC Investigation and Review Committee on the 23rd September Swamped by Cars was awarded an Investigation Panel to look into the issues raised in our petition. The panel will have powers that extend a little further than our petition. It has also been asked to investigate the University's policy of building on car parks to see if adequate provision has been made for car parks consumed by new buildings.
The panel members will be Jill Vincent (Lab) Chair, David Walker (Lib Dem), David Goss (Con) - David is an ex Loughborough Students' Union President, Jane Hunt (Con), Ken Pacey (Con) and Pauline Ranson (Con). The panel's policy advisor will be David Hankin, Director of Planning and admin support will be provided by Mike Hooper or Helen Tambini (to be confirmed.)
The Swamped by Cars team is busy preparing information to help the panel start its work.

View road maps of LCC proposals

Thanks to one of our readers we now have a link direct to the County Council's Highways Department maps of our local area with all the proposals for change overlaid on the map.

This site has now been updated to include maps of the Ashby Road/Garendon Road area as well as all the roads on the south side of the University.

Don't forget to pass in your comments to the Highways Team, you have until 30th September to return their questionaire.

We have created a short link to put in your browser below.

http://tiny.cc/1vKeQ

County Council makes an exhibition of itself.

On Friday morning at 9.00am I opened an e mail to say 'Swamped by Cars' could attend the County Council's Exhibition after all. This exhibition was just for residents and it covered all the roads south of the University and the Kingfisher estate.
We rushed around, prepared a poster, bought some T shirts, got them printed and arrived at the Edward Herbert Building for the 1.00pm start. As I entered the hall I heard the representative from the Council apologising to the eight or nine local residents, who had arrived on time, for the lack of an exhibition, it was in two cars that had just set off from Leicester.
So I approached the council official, introduced myself, in my 'Swamped by Cars' T shirt, and asked if he wanted me to take over? 'Oh, yes please', he answered. Then my colleague from Swamped by Cars arrived and between us we spoke to all the residents who were already there and all the newly arriving residents.
The exhibition finally got started properly just before 2.00pm. There was a steady stream of residents for the rest of the afternoon and when the exhibition reopened in the evening the visitor numbers continued at about the same pace until it closed at 8.oopm.
The plans are more modest in their scope than we had first read about in February when we decided to set up Swamped by Cars. In fact most of the roads will only have yellow lines at the corners. Ashleigh, Mountfields, Oaklands and Outwoods Drive will get parking bays and these will be set in a hop scotch pattern, on alternating sides of the roads, causing multiple chicanes. I'm sorry but I was too busy talking to residents to notice the proposals for Kingfisher, perhaps someone from there will e mail in the particulars and I will amend this post.

The overall conclusions from the Swamped by Cars team was that most residents understand the cause of the parking problems. The problems come from students at the University and it is the University that should sort this not, not the County Council.

The University's new Design Building

The University has applied for planning permission to build a new Design Building. I have seen the plans and it will be a very large building. (Search for p/09/1445/2 on the planning portal at the CBC web site.) It will stretch from behind the Badminton and Netball Shed on Epinal Way all the way to the back gardens of the houses on Mountfields Avenue.
However, surprise surprise, it is to be built on a student car park and over 200 parking places will be lost. During the construction phase, which will almost certainly be over two academic years, even more student parking places will be lost as the builders and contractors will need parking space for their cars and vans. There will also need to be site-offices, material storage and off-loading facilities. So expect many more than 200 car park spaces to be lost. A new car park is to be built to hold 170 cars but these will have to be for staff at least during the working day. How the construction phase car parking will be managed is not part of the planning application so we have drawn this to the attention of the Planning Committee in our letter of objection.
Naturally the 'Swamped by Cars' team has objected to the plans solely on the loss of student car parking spaces. We know of other residents who are also objecting.
You have to read the University's Green Travel Plan which was submitted with the plans. (It is a requirement under national PPG13 Planning Guidance rules.). If you wonder why Swamped by Cars was set up all will be revealed once you realise how poor the University's Green Travel Plans are. I am happy to call them a disgrace for what is, in other aspects, a highly successful and respected university. We need to get the Council to put pressure on the University to get a proper green travel plan in place and acted upon. We may be able to do this through the Section 106 procedure of the Town and Country Planning Act. Other Universities have had stringent 106's placed on them by their local councils, for example Surrey University. At Surrey, Guildford Council has required the University to install traffic measurement sensors at its entrances so the Council knows exactly what traffic is being generated by their university. They then required the University to achieve a percentage reduction in traffic and stick to the lower figure each year. Charnwood Borough Council has a lot to learn about these controls. We will do our best to educate them.

Dirty work at the crossroads

Having got Cabinet's agreement to set up an investigatory panel you would think the next stage was fairly strightforward. You would be wrong.

We expected the next stage would be consideration at Scrutiny Commission. This body is made up of councillors who are not on Cabinet but who are either chair or vice-chair of committees. The Chair of Scrutiny is Max Hunt (Lab) and the Vice Chair is Steve Hampson (Con). As it happens the meeting of the 27th August would be chaired by Councillor Hampson as Max Hunt was away on holiday.

A week before the meeting we were told the agenda had been printed and there was something there that we might like to look at and consider. It was an agenda paper from an officer saying, notwithstanding the recommendation of Cabinet, the Commission need not follow the recommendation to set up a panel but, if it did, then officers would not provide administrative support or minute-taking facilities. I have to say this threw us somewhat. Are Cabinet decisions always ignored by officers, sometimes ignored by officers or, just on this occassion? We sent an e mail off to a senior member of cabinet for clarification. I don't know what happened behind the scenes but within two hours we had an e mail back saying, we would get a panel and it will be serviced by officers.

Spurred on by this behaviour we decided to attend Scrutiny Commission with some supporters so we could see the outcome of this manoevering. There were a number of councillors who spoke and wanted clarification on the point we had raised and the tone of the meeting was, ..'we should have a panel and officers should support it in the normal way'.

So our panel is now passed to a further committee for implementation.

The Cabinet Meeting 6th August 2009

About an hour before the meeting we had a torrential downpour and I would not have been surprised if the SwampedbyCars team had arrived on their own. But showing great dedication 21 people turned up fifteen minutes early(!) for a photograph of supporters grouped behind our campaign banner, 'SwampedbyCars'. And by the time the meeting started we had nearly 40 supporters in the Council Chamber annex to hear the cabinet discuss our petition.

Fortunately we had asked that our item came early in the agenda so we didn't have long to wait. The main speakers were Mr D Hankin, who summarised his report (mentioned in an earlier blog entry) and Peter Lewis our councillor who read out a short statement prepared by ourselves. When the item was opened for general discussion there was a very sensible contribution from Councillor David Slater whom we had met as a group in the previous week. In short, he proposed that the Investigation and Scrutiny Committee set up a panel to consider and make recommendations on the way forward in respect of the issues raised in the petition, namely the University entrances and parking policies. Such a panel would receive evidence from residents, the University and the students Union as well collect information from other universities where it is known that there are controls limiting student cars being brought to the town. This proposal met with agreement and it was added to the recommendations contained in the Hankin report.

As mentioned previously, we could only observe and not take part but thanks to Councillor Peter Lewis's professional presentation of our statement and Councillor Slater's sensible contribution we felt that we had been given fair consideration by the cabinet.

We shall be pressing for an early meeting of the review panel and we will report developments as soon as possible on this site.

What Happened before the Meeting?

A few days before the meeting D Hankin, Director of Development at CBC, circulated a 6 page response to our document to the Cabinet and ourselves. The recommendations, slightly reduced, are below:
1. The frustrations and concerns underpinning the petitioners' call for an urgent review of university parking and entrance policies are noted.
2. That the range of responses by the Borough Council, the University and the highways authority are also noted.
3. That the highways authority's commitment to the West Loughborough Parking Study is supported in principle.
4. That enquiries are made of University towns where parking controls have been imposed restricting students bringing cars to the town.
5. That dialogue with the University is maintained through existing channels.
The report went on to summarise our potential solutions and some of the actions taken already by the University.
If you would like to read the report we have reduced the CBC link to the following:
http://tiny.cc/4vf7E
Ian Webb, leader of 'Swamped by Cars' then tried to find minutes of the meetings between the Council and the University as mentioned in recommendation No. 5 of the report. These meetings have been happening for many years but are not minuted. As this is the preferred channel of communication between the Council and the University in Mr Hankin's report you might imagine we had some reservations. Democratic governance, openness and how do we show that agreements have been acted upon if we can't see the minutes?
There was a flurry of exchanges with officers, councillors and our members, then, just before the meeting it was suggested that a further recommendation be considered. To find out what this is, you will need to read the next installment on this blog!

At Council Cabinet Meeting 6th August 2009

We are extremely grateful to all the local residents who turned out (during a torrential downpour) to support us at the Council Cabinet meeting on Thursday evening. Twentyone people made it in time for the photo above and by the time the meeting started we had nearly forty supporters present. An excellent show of support. Thank you all, especially Anne for the banner!

Our chance to influence Charnwood Borough Council Cabinet

Read our petition at:

http://tiny.cc/bxbEB

Apologies from Editor. This post was lost during an editing procedure on 25th September 2009

Swampedbycars leader lobbys Tory Shadow Transport Minister

Friday 24th July 2009-07-27

At the invitation of the Loughborough and District Cyclists Union, Swamped by cars leader Ian Webb met Nicky Morgan, prospective Conservative candidate for Loughborough and the Tory Shadow Transport Minister Stephen Hammond in Leicester today.

Student Car Exclusion Zone Should be Three Miles

Letters to the Loughborough Echo 10th July 2009

John Catt, representing the Loughborough and District Cyclists Users' Campaign, wrote a challenging letter to the Echo this week. He called for a three-mile exclusion zone for student cars similar to the Cambridge University ban that covers an even bigger area.

'Such a policy would have the advantage of greatly increasing the number of pedestrians and cyclists in Loughborough making it safer for both and encouraging the local authority to invest more in facilities for walking, cycling and the local bus service.'

Below is a link to the Loughborough and District Cyclists Users' Campaign web-site.

www.lduc.org.uk

Nearly All Top 40 Universities Have Parking Bans

Letters to the Loughborough Echo 3rd July 2009

Our campaign group had a lengthy letter published drawing attention to how nearly all the top UK universities now ban student cars from their campuses and many also ban student cars from their towns and cities. Our letter drew attention to how Durham University has banned student cars from the City of Durham -see our post for the 28th June 2009.

Many of the top universities banned student cars following a review of traffic congestion after the last Conservative Government passed the Traffic Reduction Act in April 1997.

Our letter then described how a similar review took place in Charnwood by Leicestershire County Council and how they too engaged Loughborough University as a reviewer.

The report showed that traffic congestion was identified on Ashby Road and Epinal Way and that there is an excess of parking on the town streets but no active policies were proposed to deal with either the congestion or the excess parking.

Reviews of parking were taken across the whole country and students are no longer allowed to park at the following top universities: Aberdeen, Aston, Bath, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff Dundee, Durham, Edinburgh, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford, Belfast, Reading, Strathclyde, Warwick, York and almost all the London Universities.

Because of its size relative to the town, Loughborough should have been the first university to ban student cars not the last.

We call on the Borough Council and if necessary the County Council to put in place measures that restrict students bringing cars to the town, stop them parking on roads around the university and promote green travel solutions for both students and staff.

University Library open 24 hours doesn't help the car situation.

Letters to the Loughborough Echo 3rd July 2009

Elizabeth and Tim Illson have an excellent letter published drawing attention to an increase of inconsiderate parking by university students now that the exam season is upon us again. This is made much worse by the university library opening 24 hours a day as it attracts students to park near entrances during the day and during the night as well.

'This causes severe stress to the local residents as we have to endure streams of student cars circulating in our streets looking for a parking place. On bad days it is like living in a shopping centre car park at Christmas!'

There follows several paragraphs describing how even though students are breaking parking regulations the authorities are reluctant to enforce the controls. Drawing on comments made in an earlier letter on student noise, the conclusion is drawn that this is a constant theme with university issues, the authorities first deny there is a problem and later, they may admit there is an issue but say Loughborough has to put up with it because the university is the 'towns largest employer'.

There follows a stark warning to both the town and the university that as student misbehaviour reduces the quality of life of Loughborough residents then the resulting atmosphere of town-gown hostility will discourage students from coming here.

With apologies to the authors for this contraction of their excellent and carefully written letter.

Residents call for action over student parking.

26th June 2009. The Loughborough Echo reports;

Angry Loughborough residents are calling for Charnwood Borough Council to enforce tighter measures to prevent the town's university from "encouraging" its students to park in private streets.

Ian Webb told the Echo, 'We are asking the Council to act now. We want them to use legislation to put some control over the way the university is managing its students. The university is a successful one, growing at an accelerating rate. But we are concerned that the University is not accommodating the cars that the students are bringing to the town'.

'They are quite happy to dump these student cars on our streets. We live very close to the university and it is simply unfair to have to put up with this'. Mr Webb added that the residents are going to the Council, as they believe that the University will not take any action on this, as history has shown this has been a problem for the past fifty years.

Sunday 28th June. Read our document!

The document prepared by the campaign group, 'Swampedbycars' is now available for you to read on a public access web site. There is no need to register to use this site just enter the address into your search bar and it will take you straight to the document. Or, click here to read
http://tiny.cc/bxgEB