Following on from the news that the bridge is going to be closed a bit longer than was originally planned, and the subsequent debate about that in various social media outlets, I thought it might be helpful to set the record straight about a few things….
The reason it’s closed right now is because of the weather. If it hadn’t been for the floods at the beginning of the year, the closure period would have been over the summer when the effect on traffic would have been a lot less severe. And pushing the closure back to autumn/winter has had the knock-on effect of making it more weather affected now. The contractors are working on a flood plain; even if the water level doesn’t rise high enough to cover it completely it still turns into a bog when it rains hard. Everyone who came along to the fireworks in Corporation Meadow on 5th November will be well aware of that! So the work is very weather-dependent, and there’s nothing that either the council or the contractors can do to stop it raining.
Nobody can predict for certain how long this kind of work will take. Sometimes it takes longer than predicted, and sometimes it’s quicker. But nobody notices when it’s quicker, because that doesn’t make the papers and nobody complains about it. In this particular case, too, the scheduled closure period was based on the original scheduled dates in summer. Had it gone ahead then, it probably would have been completed within the stated time period. Pushing it further back in the year made it more of a risk that it would overrun.
Ultimately, the costs of the bridge construction and any associated mitigation measures are being paid for by us, the taxpayers. Central government is contributing around half the cost, which comes out of things like income tax, VAT, etc. The other half is being paid by the county council, which comes out of council tax. Asking the council to spend more on mitigation measures, therefore, means asking them to spend more of our money.
Even when the bridge is open again, it won’t solve all the traffic problems straight away. It will still be restricted width for at last a couple more months while the rest of the work takes place. Cast your minds back to late summer, when the bridge was just one lane in each direction, and remember how the queues used to stretch all the way back to the High Street. It will be like that again afterwards, for quite some time. But the mitigation measures, such as cheaper bus fares and cheaper parking, will end when it reopens. Paradoxically, the town centre may be more attractive to shoppers now, with those measures in place, than it is with the bridge open and no mitigation measures in place. Certainly, the short-stay car parks are fuller now than they have been previously.
The original Abbey Bridge took over three years to build. The new one will, by the time it’s finished, have taken around 18 months. And that includes removing the old bridge as well as building a new one. Even with the delays, that’s pretty good going.
We couldn’t have got “some good English firm” (c/f Spotted:Evesham) to have done the job quicker or cheaper. There were five tenders for the contract, all of them would have taken about the same length of time overall and Hochtief (the successful bidder) was by far the cheapest.
None of the councils involved – county, district or town – have any power over business rates. Attractive though it might be to reduce them in order to help traders, that simply isn’t within our remit. Business rates are set nationally, and local authorities have no control over them. There is a system for what’s known as “hardship” relief, but that’s intended primarily for situations where a single business which provides a key amenity to the area is under immediate threat of closure. it doesn’t apply in cases where an entire town is suffering equally from an external event, or to cases where businesses are simply having to tighten their belts in order to survive.
The councils are spending £200,000 in mitigation measures over the closure period, including the parking concessions, subsidised bus fares and the YES scheme. These are designed to benefit the entire town, not individual traders, so it’s obviously going to have more of an effect for some than others as a lot depends on how the traders make use of it (particularly the YES scheme) and how their particular customer base is distributed. It is probably fair to say that the parking concessions are helping the Bridge Street and High Street shops more than Vine Street and Riverside Centre businesses, as the closest car parks to the latter haven’t had prices reduced. But this is a far more cost-effective way of helping traders than simply divvying up that money and giving it to them, as it encourages shoppers into the town and makes it easier for them to spend their money with the traders.
The current temporary traffic scheme through Oat Street and Mill Bank was supported by 65% of respondents to the consultation earlier in the year. If you happen to be in the 35% who responded but disagreed with it, then I’m sorry, but you were outvoted. If you disagree with it but didn’t respond to the consultation at all, then you can hardly complain that your views weren’t taken into account.
Retail sales across the entire country were down in October, and down overall for this year compared to last year. There are all sorts of reasons for this, but it does mean that if traders in Evesham have had reduced takings over that period then it almost certainly isn’t just the bridge that was the cause. We aren’t immune to the effects of the wider economy.
The Co-Op and Riverside Centre car parks haven’t reduced their prices because they’re privately owned, so the council has no control over them. And the long-stay car parks haven’t had their prices changed because they’re aimed primarily at commuters, not shoppers, and the county decided that it was better to focus the concessions on the car parks used by shoppers as that’s what the traders need the most. But part of the problem is that reducing prices in the council-run short-stay car parks has just sucked in more cars that would otherwise have gone elsewhere. I was in the Riverside Centre car park a few days ago and it was a lot less full than normally, but when I walked past Oat Street the car park was chocka. That’s also one of the reasons why making the council-run car parks completely free won’t work; they’ll just get filled up with people parking all day for nothing and shoppers will be forced to go elsewhere where it costs a lot more.
I think that just about covers all the key questions. If there’s anything you think I haven’t addressed that I should have, then let me know.