Newington Village Hall Carpark

CAR PARK at NEWINGTON VILLAGE HALL WITHOUT PREJUDICE

The Village Hall signed a 99 year lease with SBC on the 23rd December, 1991, granting free use of the car park to the users of the hall. As a result of this agreement the whole village has benefited from free parking for the last 35 years.

Initially the hall committee had to provide a minimum of 50 parking spaces in order to gain parking

requirements, to build the hall.

The committee also paid for, at no cost to the tax payer or village, all of the infrastructure to the car park, ie drainage, kerbing, tarmacking, white lining and landscaping. Only the land is owned by SBC.

Everything worked well until the last 5 years or so, when due to Major Development in Newington, all of the village now have problems with parking.

For us, people going to the station park all day; car dealers leave vehicles, not moving for months; new housing sites tell clients we have a station, whose car park is inadequate, and they are told to park at the hall, plus commercial parking. Consequently, hirers of the hall and the scout hut, have been unable to park, or received PC notices because they have had to park incorrectly.

Subsequently the hall found itself in the position it might have to close, because groups were thinking about leaving.

We have 19 groups that meet at the hall, some weekly, some monthly and one group 3 times a week. In all over 1,000 people use the hall in a month. Plus private bookings.

The scouts also have the same problem.

If the hall had to close because of no parking available, then SBC would probably put in Pay and Display, which I believe is £1.50 per hr, with 24 hr parking permits costing between £65 - £125 per month.

Just to clarify, our proposed system, which has no financial cost for the public, will be the responsibility of the Village Hall Committee and Trustees, and managed by UKPC. This will involve ANPR (automatic number plate recognition).

To support the village there will be a 2 hour free parking, 7 days a week, but there is no parking between 1am – 5am.

The scouts will get free use of the car park, and users of the village hall will get free parking.

There will be 10 Residential parking spaces, for people in a close proximity to the hall that have NO parking spaces.

We have tried as best we can to implement a scheme to help as many people as possible. Unfortunately, it is not possible to please everyone. I do feel however that your complaint regarding the yellow lines in Church Lane should be taken up with SBC.

Regarding notification of the closure, we are still waiting for SBC to notify the users and remove the parking signs. So in the meantime we have placed notices on the cars in the car park.

Information from Dave Fagg chairman of Newington Village Hall Committee