Please respond to Mead Lane consultation below
As liveaboard boaters without home moorings are being unlawfully forced by CRT to travel longer distances to avoid having our homes seized and removed, many of us have also been forced to use cars to get to work and take children to school, when previously we could rely on cycling and public transport. Many are now having to travel to work or school from places that are much further away, including rural Wiltshire and Berkshire, where public transport is poor or non-existent.
Not having access to a vehicle can put us at risk of losing our jobs, being fined if children have to miss school, or losing our homes if we cannot use a vehicle and have to stay within daily travelling distance of work or school by public transport or bicycle.
One consequence of CRT’s 2015 enforcement policy against us is that we need to rely much more on vehicle parking being available near to where we moor. This is at a time when parking restrictions in the vicinity of the river and canal are increasing. Some of these parking restrictions are deliberately targeted at liveaboard boaters. The restrictions also adversely affect many other canal users, such as anglers, canoeists and walkers.
Over the past two years and more, the following measures have been proposed or put in place to prevent or restrict parking near the K&A:
Total overnight parking ban proposed for Mead Lane, Saltford
Despite the best efforts of the boating community and BaNES Council to reach a compromise between the residents of Mead Lane, Saltford and boaters who moor for 14 days on the river there, BaNES Traffic Management Department has proposed a Traffic Regulation Order to prevent overnight parking all the way along Mead Lane.
A consultation on the proposed parking restrictions will run from 16th August to 6th September 2017, and the documents will only be available between these dates at the link below:
Please respond to the consultation giving your views on how this will adversely affect liveaboard boaters without home moorings
The documents are posted on the lower right hand side of this web page
http://www.bathnes.gov.uk/services/streets-and-highway-maintenance/roadworks/permanent-traffic-order-notices/overnight-parking
- Increased parking restrictions in Beckford Road, Bath
- Progressively stricter parking time limits in Bathampton over the past few years
- Canal users prevented from using the George Inn car park
- Double yellow lines on Ferry lane, Claverton, including prevention of parking in the lay-by
- Restricting parking at Limpley Stoke bridge has been discussed by the Parish Council
- Reduction in time limit in Avoncliff car park
- ‘No Parking’ sign at Smelly Bridge
- Parking restrictions proposed along most of Moulton Drive beside the K&A in Bradford on Avon, but amended to continue to accommodate canal users after representations from Councillors
- Parish Council unhappy with parking around the Barge Inn, Seend Lay-by next to Seend bridge partly blocked by gravel left over from CRT bridge repairs
- Double yellow lines in Spout Lane, Sells Green being discussed by Parish Council
- The Bridge Inn, Horton car park restricted to three hours, with exceptions in quiet times with the landlord’s permission
- Parking now discouraged by the landowner at Stanton Bridge
- The Barge Inn, Honey Street restricted to four hours, though longer may be possible with permission
- Half of the parking space near Wide Water removed
- Parking space removed at Wolf Hall
- Great Bedwyn Parish Council is planning a parking and traffic survey of the village, though this is probably due to commuters parking in the village and using the train service to Reading and London
There are also some improvements and good news:
- Works planned in Wilcot to improve the drainage where the lane is wide enough to park vehicles and to prevent parking where the lane is narrowest
- Wiltshire Council confirmed in 2015 that it owns the public highway and verge in Kelston Road, the track leading east from the Harrow in Little Bedwyn, contrary to a local landowner’s attempt to prevent people from parking vehicles in the lane
- CRT and the Parish Council have discussed providing extra parking at Seend for canal users
- The K&A Canal East meetings between Parish Councils, residents, CRT and canal users have discussed whether extra parking space can be provided anywhere
- There are landowners who generously let boaters park free of charge, or who make a small charge for parking.
Tags: BANES Council, community, consultation, continuous cruising, CRT continuous cruising policy, enforcement, liveaboards, Mead Lane, parking, Saltford, Traffic Regulation Orders
Andrew Lingard
I take my elderly mother on my boat most weekends and because she can’t walk far, I depend on being able to park just for a few hours near the canal. It’s the only outing that she really enjoys so I can see these trips becoming fewer if i can’t park by the canal.
Does this mean that you may park within 15 yards of a road?
section 34(3) RTA 1988, it is not an offence under section 34(1) if a person drives a mechanically propelled vehicle on any land within fifteen yards of a road, being a road on which a motor vehicle may lawfully be driven, for the purpose only of parking the vehicle on that land.