Mini Holland - update

Ruckholt Road

Some views

Some more views

Answers from Cllr Loakes to questions raised by Stella Creasy MP

Good Morning Stella
Hope you had a pleasant weekend?
Below are the answers to each of your more detailed questions


1) the next stage of the consultation following the trial- you have said in
previous emails there will be further public meetings and opportunities for
residents to feed into the project. Do you have the details of these, who
will be able to participate and what will be discussed at the events i.e.
what is open to amendment and what is not?

The next stage of the project is to provide further information on what we
have collected during the trial- traffic data etc-, to present and test out
some modifications to the scheme and to gather further feedback of the
trial from the community including business, residents, schools and
smaller community groups.

The first group we shall be meeting with is the businesses within the
area.  We have a number of designated workshops for businesses to attend
next week, whether from Orford Road or those situated elsewhere like on
Grove Road. This workshop will look to establish how they felt the trial
went, the benefits, their biggest concerns and what solutions are there to
resolve their biggest issues.

Following on, in the same pattern, we have organised four separate
workshops in 4 different locations for residents on the evening of the 6th
November. We have geographically spilt the trial area into four sections,
this will allow us to discuss in more detail with residents the area that
most concerns them around where they live. Please find attached the letter
being too sent to residents from Tuesday (yesterday).

Following these workshops we shall look to finalise our proposals before
going out to formal consultation on a final scheme.

2) Details of any further trials or areas that may also be used to test
parts of the project- do you have plans to trial road closures, changes in
routes, one way systems etc as part of this project anywhere else in the
Walthamstow area of which residents should be aware?

At present we are currently working on the trial area around Walthamstow
Village only. The ‘village areas’ as outlined in our original bid stretch
between Lea Bridge Road to Forest Road although we do not
currently intend to trial schemes across these areas at this time. We will
begin detailed work on these learning from all aspects of our ‘Walthamstow
Village’ approach in January.

3) the timescale for the final implementation - in your previous emails you
have stated that the final configuration for the Mini Holland project will
be implemented by January 2015, which means that the formal consultation
and any other trials etc will be completed within the next eight weeks. Can
you clarify if this is still your intention or if your timetable for this
scheme has been amended in the light of the trial

The January 2015 start date of implementation is in regards to the
Walthamstow Village area that we have currently trialled and not for other
areas.  The scheme being developed is not only about the road closures etc,
but we are also looking to improve the road surfaces, remove some of the
older traffic calming measures and replace with new, improve the street
lighting and make some wider improvements to the public realm. It is
therefore anticipated that the full implementation and completion period
for the Walthamstow Village ‘mini- Holland’ could be up to May.

4) the response from TFL and the emergency services- can you confirm if and
when you are meeting with TFL and the emergency services to discuss the
impact of the trial on travel around Walthamstow and or if you have any
feedback from them that you can share with residents ?

As stated above we are still in the process of gathering information with
all stakeholders including the emergency services, once we have spoken to
residents and businesses we shall be sharing this with other stakeholders
as we develop the scheme.

The ‘mini- Holland’ funding is from TfL so you can imagine how close an
‘eye’ they are keeping on our initiatives in Waltham Forest, especially as
we are the first of the 3 boroughs to go live with any of the initiatives
mentioned in our winning bid document. To that end we are meeting and
speaking with them on at least a weekly basis if not daily and have been
for the past couple of months!

As part of the TfL family; Dial-a- Ride and the bus network issues around
our proposals are dealt with by not only ourselves flagging up our
proposals but also by the managerial leadership of TfL.

Regarding the emergency services we continue to discuss our proposals with
them at a local leadership level and we have also approached them to
provide us with a senior liaison point for all future ‘mini- Holland’
discussions.

I hope this is helpful and clarifies matters?

Cheers

Clyde