Homes plan for car park land
CONTROVERSIAL plans to sell-off part of a public car park to create room for a housing development are being re-considered.
Hundreds of people had fought the plans to sell part of the car park off London Road, in Chesterton, to Staffordshire Housing Association.
Council officers later delayed their decision after fears the loss of spaces on the 70-space car park could cause parking problems nearby.
Now a revised scheme will be discussed by Newcastle Borough Council's cabinet on Wednesday.
It wants to cut the number of spaces to 45 after officers spent two weeks counting the number of vehicles using the car park.
The council report states: "Car parking is clearly an important issue that needs to be carefully considered.
"The surveys show the maximum car parking spaces used at any one time is 46."
The results come as the council is in talks with SHA over the value of the land.
The report adds: "Any sale would be conditional to Staffordshire Housing securing planning permission for affordable housing."
2 Comments
by LAZARUS, North Staffs
Monday, February 15 2010, 11:17PM
“For this site its a bad idea, but then for the Council its a win win scenario, cheap homes for the Housing association, tenants on Housing Benefits, Central Government cough up, and the money goes round and round. In fact if Stoke and Hanley were to adopt this method they could generate millions instead of wasting millions employing traffic wardens and as they have driven shoppers to out of town malls they will coin it in , make a few redundancies, and maybe we could get a rebate of the Council Tax.”
by S Richards, Staffordshire
Monday, February 15 2010, 10:27AM
“This article shows the flawed thinking of the council. Maximum of 46 spaces in use so make the car park one space smaller! Surely an intelligent person would set the car park size to a few spaces more than the maximum as the two weeks they chose may not be representative of the actual use either.”