The Harrison Road Traffic Regulation Order will restrict all residents within the area of Stafford Street to Cannon Street and Harrison Road to Belgrave Road, and their visitors, from being able to park outside their own homes (by reducing the spaces available to park in and requiring them to purchase parking permits), prevent customers of the many businesses in the area from parking there for more than half an hour (if they are even able to find a space in the proposed limited bays that will be available for them) and force people to take longer journeys, most likely using the busier, frequently congested Melton Road and its junction with Marfitt Street, which will greatly affect the families, elderly and working population of the area, as well as the businesses that operate from there, for no benefit to the community.

The proposed one-way changes will lead to increased traffic on Melton Road/Catherine Street, and the side streets in between them, due to motor vehicles no longer being able to travel directly along Harrison Road in both directions and cause difficulties for some local residents, like those off the north-most section of Harrison Road, reaching or leaving their homes due to the suggested single points of entry/exit which will only be made worse when you factor in accidents or road works at or near these entry/exit points, which in turn will affect emergency services reaching residents who need them and locals being able to make urgent emergency journeys.

The council have advised part of their reasoning for the proposed Traffic Regulation Order is due to problems with school run traffic in the area but the community have identified the changes the council plan to make will negatively impact them a great deal more than an hour of school run traffic a day currently does.  The longer journeys and increased re-direction of vehicles to busier roads and junctions due to the changes in the Traffic Regulation Order will increase the risk to public safety and overall lead to congestion levels in the area increasing as well and therefore cause more pollution overall. 

The restricted areas to park in and requirement for parking permits penalises the community of the affected area where frequently large families are living together (and are regularly having family/friends come to visit), with multiple household members requiring their own vehicles to commute to work, and other family members also needing their own vehicles for personal reasons, so the reduction in the space available for them to be able to park in will cause them great difficulties and the cost to purchase permits for themselves and their visitors on top of this now is extremely unjust, especially as the majority of the area are working class and the high cost of the permits was not even clearly disclosed to the public.

Customers of businesses in and nearby to the streets impacted by the Traffic Regulation Order will struggle to find parking, reducing footfall overall for these businesses, due to only certain bays being available for non-residents to park in and the half hour time limit on these bays not providing enough time if they need to go to one of the popular sweet marts on Belgrave Road, which have regularly long queues, or if they wish to go to one of the many restaurants, cafes, barbers/hairdressers or beauty salons in the affected area.

The bays available for non-residents are also open for residents displaying a parking permit to use with no limit which would make them unavailable for customers of businesses in the area and furthermore, these bays after 6.30pm Monday to Saturday and all day on Sundays can only be used by residents preventing customers parking nearby to visit restaurants within the area in the evenings or any of the businesses there that are open on Sundays.

The reduction in parking spaces and permit only parking does not take into account the essential workers (such as school teachers, dental surgery/opticians/pharmacist employees and domiciliary carers) that need parking within the area and who will experience significant problems due to the proposed plans, making their roles even more challenging and untenable.

The plans for the Traffic Regulation Order have been decided with little input from the community, with the original issues possibly raised by some residents misconstrued to create the extreme changes detailed in the Order that actually are a detriment to a much larger number of residents, as well as the businesses of the area and their customers. 

The communication for the Traffic Regulation Order was only supplied in English despite this being a second language for many Rushey Mead / Belgrave residents, who would therefore struggle to understand the documents and the changes that would be severely impacting them (possibly even being completely unaware of them), and the only option to object to the scheme was via email or by post which a number of the elderly and immigrant residents of the area would also struggle with too.  This therefore shows the communication and consultation phase of the Traffic Regulation Order discriminates against those who are not fluent in English and who are not easily able to respond by email/post.

In summary, the road changes detailed in the Traffic Regulation Order for the Harrison Road area have not been communicated to the relevant community in a manner that they can understand and these plans will actually cause greater parking issues for residents, as well as lead to increased pollution levels and risks in public safety, unnecessarily causing great difficulties to the Rushey Mead / Belgrave community (and Leicester residents in general) if they are implemented so we urge the council to withdraw these plans and instead look at discussing alternative options with the community via suitable channels.

Petition page photo credit to user Lisa.davis from Wikipedia.