Sweetbriar Industrial Estate waiting restrictions - Norwich City Council

Report
Background
1. Following previous consultation with business about a preferred parking
proposal for the Sweetbriar Industrial Estate it was agreed at the July 23 rd 2009
meeting of the Norwich Highways Agency Committee to defer a decision on
proposed waiting restrictions pending further consultation.
2. Following this meeting four options were developed by Transportation officers,
these plans are included in the appendix and are as follows:
• Option 1: Main roads and junctions protected
• Option 2: Option 1 plus requests for parking controls from businesses
• Option 3: Combines Option 1 and 2 plus protection for all site accesses
• Option 4: No change; no new parking controls proposed
3. All businesses on the Sweetbriar Industrial estate were sent a voting sheet
with an explanatory covering letter and plans for each option (copies in
Appendix) on the week commencing 12 th October 2009 with a response date of
Friday 6 th November 2009. The response sheet invited businesses to rank the
options in order of preference with 1 being most preferred and 4 least preferred.
62 businesses responded, out of 102 business addresses on the Sweetbriar
industrial estate which represents a 61% response rate. 12 consultation packs
sent to addresses on the estate were returned by Royal Mail; these have not
been counted for the purposes of establishing the response rate.
4. The number of votes received were as follows:
Table 1: Results of consultation on options
Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Option 4
Ranked 1 st 17 (28%) 21 (36%) 11 (19%) 10 (17%)
Ranked 2 nd 15 (27%) 15 (27%) 13 (24%) 12 (22%)
Ranked 3 rd 26 (46%) 19 (34%) 9 (16%) 2 (4%)
Ranked 4 th 0 2 (4%) 23 (41%) 31 (55%)
5. It is very clear from the responses to option 4 (the do nothing option) that a
significant majority of businesses recognise and agree that some form of
parking control within the estate is desirable. Option 2 received most votes as
the preferred option, ranked first by a third of businesses, and first or second by
nearly 60% of businesses. Comments from some of the businesses were also
received, and these are detailed below, together with an officer response