Regeneration Select – Glossop special

Tuesday evening saw the second trip of the week over to Buxton.

This time for a meeting of the Regeneration Select Committee, which although taking place in Buxton the agenda for the meeting consisted largely of items about Glossop, with reports on the design and place making strategy, and the review of Glossop parking.

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The Glossop design and place making strategy, started off proceedings and essentially this document is the condensed views of the various folk that attended workshops earlier this years to give their views on the general direction of Glossop in ‘planning terms’ no doubt (the cynic in my thinks) as it fits into the view from the consultants hired to put the strategy together.

The reason the cynic in me thinks this, is to a certain extent the end output of this process is get a document that will be used as ‘supplementary planning guidance’, so to a certain extent, aside from the specific details relating to location etc, a certain amount of the details relate to more generic planning terms, rather than a clear general vision for Glossop.

Anyway the next step is for the ‘strategy’ is to go back out for public consultation, and it will be interesting to see, how many of the folk who attended the earlier workshops will view the ‘strategy’ as having met the views they fed in.

This next stage of the ‘consultation’ will be mainly online with copies of the strategy being sent to those who attended the workshops along with various local, regional and national organisations.

If you want you can get an early preview, of the strategy by viewing the committee report which was circulated as part of the agenda and includes a copy of the strategy at : http://www2.highpeak.gov.uk/council/agenmin/regen/part1/20110118/05.pdf

One element a number of the Glossopdale members in attendance (well the Labour one’s anyway) flagged was the need for the two ‘missing’ or not ready yet reports covering the Glossop Town Hall Complex and Wood’s Mill to be circulated amongst Glossopdale Councillor’s for comments before going to be ‘rubber stamped’ for approval by the executive, rather than the original recommendation which was for the executive member to approve them without other Councillor’s having seen them.

Next up was a consultation on the draft Derbyshire Local Transport Plan from 2011 to 2026, which to some extent for any actions to improve local transport in Glossopdale essentially relies on the Longdendale Integrated Transport Strategy (sometimes referred to as bypass 2.0) as put together by Tameside Council to by passed and implemented for anything to happen with limited explanation on any measures that the County Council will take to make improvements in the Glossopdale area should the LITS plan not go ahead or have it’s funding reduced.

Also missing on a slightly wider High Peak view was any consideration of measures to implement many of the issues that were identified for transport improvement as part of process we went through to consider the failed Greater Manchester Congestion Charge Process, a number of which (in my view at least) could well be implemented in these difficult financial times at little cost to either of the council’s.

Also as part of the local transport plan were the proposals for the Gamesley Station, which again unfortunately along with most of the actions for Glossopdale seems to have being left to Tameside Council and the LITS process to solve rather than a proactive lists of actions from the County as to how they will take steps to try and get any of these actions to happen.

Last up on Glossop night, was a report on the Glossop Area Parking Review, which aside from highlighting that on the whole there is enough car parking spaces available in the centre of Glossop owned by council, didn’t really tell you that much, it did however give the opportunity for several Councillor’s to raise concerns with issues tied into parking but necessarily directly under the control of the council, mainly around problems with taxi parking outside some of the taxi offices in the centre of Glossop.