Donal OHanlon

Town Centre Regeneration (TCR) - what’s it all about?

TCR is a sub-committee of the Local Area Partnership (formerly Area Board) that tries to help the regeneration of Prestwich. I’m the Chair, and other Prestwich Councillors, Council Officers & interested third parties (businesses; residents etc.) are co-opted in to provide specialist knowledge & support.

We held a meeting on Wednesday at the Library, where Urbed (the consultants we’ve engaged to undertake a professional study of Prestwich’s “wants & needs”) presented their preliminary findings. It was very good, and promises to be a sound springboard for positive future change.

A group of Prestwich residents, many with relevant professional experience, also presented their vision of what Prestwich should aspire to, and this mostly concurs with the Urbed study. As a result, representatives of the group have been co-opted onto the TCR, to use their professional experience to ensure Urbed get the right questions asked.

After the presentations, a Q&A session was held, where Urbed & the residents’ group were quizzed on specific points, especially relating to the conflict of Bury New Road (BNR) traffic & pedestrians; delivery of plans into real development; how Bury Old Road can help shape the vision for the Town Centre and alleviate the problems of BNR; the outcome if a recession occurs; and the inter-relationship Prestwich will have with the promised “Irwell Valley Urban Park”.

Excellent questions, and some good answers, although it’s fair to say that the study is ongoing, and thus not all the answers have been developed into achievable plans yet.

The next steps are:

• A presentation to Prestwich Local Area Partnership on 3/4/08 (come along & see it!)
• A “Visioning” workshop to interested representatives of specific groups at the Logfield centre on 13/3/08
• A link through the Bury Council website to the Urbed website, keeping us all up-to-date on the work Urbed are doing (I’ll probably put a link from this one too, when I know how)
• Postcards to nearby neighbours of the Town Centre, asking for their views

So, whilst we don’t have a fantastic town centre just yet, the first steps in making change happen have been taken! (And don’t forget, this all happened when LibDems got elected in Prestwich, but for the decade before when we had a Labour-controlled Area Board, all we got was a broken water feature!!) Hmmm……

Prior to the meeting, we held meetings with Traffic/Engineering Officers from the Council, regarding Highfield Road & Whittaker Lane parking arrangements. I’m glad to announce that as a result, a study will be commissioned to review a “Residents Only” parking scheme on Highfield Rd (the initial stages of which will not take long, but the implentation of which could take much longer!); and that Officers are studying the possibility of a “Private Management Agreement” for a car park behind the Chemists, as well as supplying additional parking signs & marked bays.

So a very progressive couple of meetings, but blimey, it took us a long time and an awful lot of meetings to get to this point!!!

Next job is to draft a couple of important letters on specific issues, and deliver gazillions of leaflets (both personally & to our distributors) over the weekend. Anybody want to deliver some for us?

Cheers,

Donal