The Queen of the High Street, Mary Portas, has called on the council to pause before pushing ahead with plans to turn Western Road into a red route.
The retail consultant, broadcaster and author said that she found the proposal by Brighton and Hove City Council “deeply troubling”.
The council’s Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee is due to meet tomorrow (Tuesday 6 October) and could ask the cabinet to rethink the proposal or ask the full council to look at it.
Ms Portas, 66, said that the council should assess the potential economic effects of a red route before going ahead with the plan – not afterwards, when it may be too late to save jobs and businesses.
She wrote: “I have spent much of my working life talking about what makes high streets work. And the fundamental truth is remarkably simple.
“People need to be able to get to them, businesses need to be able to receive their goods and customers need to feel that the high street is accessible and convenient.
“Western Road is a long-established, independent high street. It has around 185 businesses, many of them small and independent. These are precisely the kinds of businesses that our high streets have spent years trying to protect and revive.
“And yet the proposal seems to me to risk doing exactly the opposite.
“I understand the argument for dealing with obstructive parking and improving the movement of buses. Of course I do.
“But I cannot understand why the council would proceed with such a significant change without first properly establishing what the economic consequences will be for the businesses that depend on this road.
“The council’s own documentation acknowledges that businesses could become less able to receive deliveries, that some businesses may be up to 70 metres from a loading bay, that the impact on footfall remains uncertain and that the economic impact will be ‘monitored in operation’.
“That seems to me to be the wrong way round.
“You should measure the impact before you impose the policy, not impose the policy and then measure who survives it.
“A business that loses customers, loses suppliers or closes during an experiment does not magically reopen when the experiment is over.
“I have also been particularly struck by the evidence concerning deliveries. Western Road has limited rear servicing so many businesses rely on access from the front of the premises.
“The proposed scheme would leave 10 loading bays serving roughly 948 metres of shopfront, with the longest walk from a loading bay to a business around 70 metres.
“For a supermarket, a florist, a restaurant, a butcher, a bookseller or any other independent business receiving stock, that isn’t an abstract transport-policy issue. It is the difference between being able to trade normally and being made significantly harder to operate.
“And then there is the human side.
“Disabled residents and carers have already told the council that being dropped even a short distance away is not necessarily an option and that loading bays and scattered blue badge spaces are not viable if someone cannot safely move from the vehicle to the pavement.
“This is not what a successful, inclusive high street should feel like.
“We have spent years talking about the decline of the British high street. Governments of different political colours have made decisions which have sometimes made it harder for independent retailers to survive.
“We have watched costs rise, online competition transform retail and many town centres lose the very individuality that once made them destinations.
“So when I see a successful independent high street being asked to accept another major intervention – without an economic impact assessment being carried out first – I find myself asking: what exactly are we trying to save if, in the process, we make it harder for the businesses themselves to survive?
“This isn’t an argument against buses. It isn’t an argument against sensible traffic management. And it certainly isn’t an argument for allowing inconsiderate or dangerous parking. It is an argument for common sense.
“The council has an opportunity to look again. The proposed red route has been called in for scrutiny, with councillors raising concerns including the lack of Western Road-specific evidence, the adequacy of loading provision and the fact that the economic impact is only to be assessed once the scheme is in operation.
“I would strongly urge you to pause before putting those red lines down. Commission an independent economic impact assessment.
“Properly assess the loading requirements of every business affected. Listen to the disabled residents who have explained why access matters.
“And look at Western Road as the high street it actually is, rather than as a piece of road that needs to be managed.
“High streets don’t survive because we draw better lines on them. They survive because people want to go there, businesses can operate there and the street remains accessible, welcoming and economically viable.
“Western Road has survived for 200 years. It has survived two world wars and covid. Please don’t let another well-intentioned intervention become the thing that pushes its independent businesses over the edge.
“I hope you will think again.”
I run a small removals company. There are many resedential properties as well as appartments based above the shops ligning the new red routes. No conciderarion has been made to how people will move in or out of their appartments…
Recently 2 of my team had to park on a side street of Lewis road and run 3 tones of boxes and furniture across a busy lewis road dodging busses, taxis and other trafic. Its completely un tenable to offer our service to the public living along red routes.
In this article one of the loading bayes mentioned is 70m away. If you imagine that we need to do 100 runs to the removal van to move all the bags, boxes and furniture, then this is ads a minimum distance of 14 kilometers or 14000 meters extra befor we need to clime the stairs to the apartments…
Each box requires a back and forth to the van making a total distance of 140m x by 100 items…
Some of the items we lift are very heavy and bulky as well, and shouldnt be walked along a busy highstreet pavement or run across busy roads.
Exemptions will need to be made for our service as it simply isn’t feasible to offer our service under these conditions. To ensure our employees welbeing and make sure they are not hit by trafic while working, we have had to tell our drivers to park on the red routes and pass on the cost of the finnes to our clients…
Non of this has been thought through…
This is a major point as little or no consideration has been given to the residents of Western Road who also need to receive deliveries and have basic rights like the ability to move in and out. When a labour councillor was asked the question about deliveries for the people living on Western Road the reply was ‘what deliveries’ – followed by a suggestion they could use the surrounding side streets. Again no planning or assessment of this sort of displacement. In a separate note, the current roadworks mean there is no emergency vehicle access at all and no plan has been shared as required, so should residents be in need of a rescue – something could go very wrong.
Fantastic that someone of her expertise has now offered to try and help. Will Cabinet listen or just say that they have some embarrassing mobile phone ping data on London Rd which means they can recklessly risk an experiment on the jobs and livelihoods of the 1000 or so people employed on Western Rd. If so at least now this campaign will start getting a national media spotlight shone on it.
I do love it when people from outside of Brighton and Hove decide to jump on a band wagon and chat utter garbage about something. Using odd numbers to make a point rather than actually looking at the issue. The issue is business owners parking their cars on one of the busiest roads in the city blocking access for everyone else. I know for Mary that’s not a problem when she is being driven around.
The council puts warden’s in and the shop owners jump in the car, drive around for ten mins and park back up. The council has data on this, everyone sees these people at it, so the solution is to enforce the law properly with cameras. Because of the law, double yellows can’t be enforced with cameras so they have to move to double red. All this means is a few people and a few deliveries will have to park slightly not outside of the businesses and boom here we go with the entitled hogwash over exaggerated arguments of doom and gloom. The simple truth is that these businesses are not offering anything unique and only function due to the location, where most people walk or bus in.
I propose that anyone who uses a bus and is sick of having to wait in rush hour for their bus to get through the slalom of selfishness boycotts these businesses. Chiefly the bakery.
Thanks to Mary for supporting our independent retailers and nailing the issues, a person of integrity and experience. You however, Imogen Hogwash, are clearly lacking in either.
The clue is in the name. “Hogwash”, lol.
Troll.
Fabulous!! Thank you Mary Portas!
“High streets don’t survive because we draw better lines on them. They survive because people want to go there, businesses can operate there, and the street remains accessible, welcoming and economically viable.”
Don’t you just LOVE Mary!
Agreed
Is that you Trevor or is it Benjamin under this new name?
If the council really wants to tackle the parking issue, take the budget allocated for all the works to turn it into a red route and spend the money on some additional parking officers to permanently patrol up and down Western Road and make it untenable for people to park there illegally. The alternative of making it untenable for independent businesses to trade there will just turn it into a wasteland of even more vape shops and empty shop fronts.
The solution is to get NSL to issue more than the two tickets a day they have been doing and also to cut the number of buses so they are not all stacked up 4 at a time at the bus stops.
How can you force them to issue tickets to people who drive around the block? The law doesnt work like that.
Actually this is where you are wrong to stop congestion almost half of western rd has time limited loading tags on the pavement. You can instantly ticket on these. Secondly, people driving off may be doing exactlly what legally they are allowed to do. You are allowed to load and unload here and disabled people are allowed to park on double yellows for up to three hours.
Great, so reduce the number of buses that most of people rely on, so that shop owners can park on the pavements. We will then increase congestion and pollution and make it harder for people to get around the city. Any more brilliant suggestions?
No one parks on the pavements except Deliveroo bikes and scooters. Moreover there’s no shortage of space for buses to pass, unlike the earlier stretch of Western Road, where council have narrowed the road to a ridiculous degree to STOP buses overtaking each other and also removed Clarence Sq bus stop.
However the question has to be asked why do we need 700 buses a day along Western Road – most of them half empty out of peak times? 21 tons each for the average electric bus plus passenger weight so ploughing up roads which were never designed for this weight continually.
I’m sure only third of the buses are electric, which really shocks me around here, I thought they all would be by now. I think they are still on diesel (?) which is not good for pollution! Completely agree too on the stretch of Western Road nearer Churchill Sq…I’ve not been able to go there since they changed that either…where do they think disabled people who need cars to travel can get too! Good to see Mary P involved!
Splendid news and very apt as the very first Mary, Queen of Shops TV programme featured Ju-Ju in the North Laines, still going strong today. An economic impact assessment should be mandatory before lengthy roadworks, a Red Route or pedestrianisation. Councils have no right to sabotage or undermine lawful businesses earning a living.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX4IAQixq-U
Will the council listen though?
There does not seem to be much democracy within BHCC.
Love it! 🤩🤩🤩
Here’s a solution!
Anyone got any Vintage Cars.
Total Bangers.
All types.
Motorbikes.
White Van Man.
Delivery Drivers.
Etc?
We’ll have a ‘Park Up!’
ALONG THE RED ROUTE!
How many Traffic Wardens do you think they have?
If one turns up.
Or any other trouble maker.
Very politely.
Ask them to carry the HENRY, up the stairs.
Or give them a paintbrush, and tell them to get on with it!
😂🤩🤩🤩
A response in from Ms Sankey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6FChg_4q-4
Great news. If only Mary Portas was our council leader. Someone with common sense who truly cares about cities and businesses thriving. What a much better place Brighton and Hove would be.
My solution would be to terminate all bus routes at Palmeria Square and Old Steine and run free shuttle buses between these two destinations along Upper North Street, between 8am and 6pm.
Why would anyone want to change buses three times to get from East Moulscoombe to Portslade Station?
That really WOULD slow bus journeys down!!!
Local elections have consequences. More at 11.