Losing car park will bring chaos

10:04am Tuesday 25th March 2008

I WAS sorry to see that the prospective Conservative candidate, Karen Lumley, had brought along the Shadow Minister for Health to lend their support to a plan that would see the demolition of a town centre car park, (No 7), in order to make way for a proposed privately-owned medical centre in Church Road, Redditch.

No doubt the speculators who own the town centre would be pleased to sell on a public service car park to anyone who would relieve them of their not very profitable duty to maintain it.

There are already a number of successful joint medical surgeries in the area. Take away a substantial car park and replacing it with a facility that creates a need for several hundred new car park spaces would bring chaos to exisiting patients, let alone frustrated newcomers.

As a former member of the planning committee of the borough council, I was pleased to see that the present committee had rejected this proposal, based on the long established, common sense planning principle that no traffic generating scheme will be allowed if adequate car parking is not provided.

Good planning is about avoiding problems before they arise. Apart from the two politicians, the Advertiser's photograph of March 12, of these "supporters" of the scheme showed a trio of individuals who might have a vested interest in overturning the council's planning decision.

Patients from the Dow surgery and Elgar House surgery should make their views known to the council and the press before April.

Maurice Clarke

Headless Cross

Redditch

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