Our no-rest supporters have stimulated another update. We were going to leave you to have a peaceful Boxing Day but you have obviously been hard at work sharing our petition and mobilising others to sign up today. 

We have been busy too, trawling through Brighton & Hove City Council’s Environment, Transport & Sustainability Committee’s agendas and documents. In  the Public reports pack for the meeting on 18 December 2020, there is a letter to Cllr Phelim MacCafferty from the Secretary of Transport, dated 13 November 2020 that attaches “Active Travel Fund: Strengthening consultation on tranche 2 schemes”. These include the requirements for Local Authorities to:

• “Show ‘reasonable evidence’ of consultation before schemes can be introduced;
• Undertake appropriate public opinion surveys before and after implementation”

“If these conditions are not met, the Department will reduce future funding allocations for local transport measures.”

We shall be sending off further questions to the Council this coming week. We shall include the following questions because none of our group can remember receiving any information on the 2021 consultation. Of course the information may have been sent in brown envelopes to the occupier from an address in Birkenhead, like the project update notice we received in November just before preliminary work started. What do you do with to “The Occupier” notices from Birkenhead? Here are the questions? Do you have any more?

• When you conducted the consultation between 1 February and 14 March 2021, how many of the 574 consultation information packs were mailed to Montpelier Terrace and Upper North Street residents as they were to be immediately affected by the project?
• How many of the 2150 consultation postcards were posted to residents of Montpelier Terrace and Upper North Street as being in the wider area? None of our group can remember receiving any information.
• How many younger, disabled and older people from Montpelier Terrace and Upper North Street were included in the focus groups for younger, disabled and older people, held on 24th, 25th February and 3rd March respectively?

Dear Rt Hon Mark Harper MP, Secretary of Transport, you will be hearing further from us!