Meeting to discuss Louth's Active Travel Scheme sees county council urged: "please listen to the people of Louth"

In a twist of irony pointed out by an attending member of the public, the meeting was held in Louth’s St James’s Church – the very location where the Lincolnshire Rising of 1536 was held – and now 500 years later, a similar uprising against unwanted change took place in the same place.

The Louth Active Travel Scheme is an 18-month-long trial that sees the restriction of traffic along Mercer Row in order to create a larger pedestrianised area feeding into Cornmarket in a bid to encourage the town’s café culture and manage traffic flow.

The scheme has attracted national interest due to its unpopularity for many people in Louth, including businesses who felt the loss of parking on Mercer Row was causing problems for their customers who could no longer park near their stores.

Further criticism came at the end of August when the county council then installed ‘parklet’ units in the place of some of the parking spaces on Mercer Row, which combine large planters and specialised seating areas in a bid to “encourage pedestrians to stop and rest”.

But the parklets were criticised by many local people, with some comments on social media calling them an “eyesore”, “repulsive” and “a waste of money”, while others considered that sitting on a busy road was a “health risk”.

Over the past few weeks, the parklets have been vandalised three times and on Tuesday last week, the road on Mercer Row and Eastgate was spray-painted with slogans including “C III [King Charles III] would hate these”, “We are Louth”, and “£5,000 a seat” and “£62,000”, and the parklet units were then removed altogether the next day.

Louth Town Council arranged a public meeting at St James Church to discuss the public’s thoughts on the scheme, which was attended by hundreds of people as well as county, town and district councillors.

Chaired by deputy mayor Julia Simmons and Louth Town Councillor Darren Hobson, facing the public was Lincolnshire County Council’s head of environment, Chris Miller, who opened the meeting by explaining the scheme in greater depth, explaining that many of the unwanted features, including the bright yellow colouring, were all due to the scheme being temporary.

He also reiterated that the scheme was an 18-month trial scheme, and many lessons would be learned.

Coun Simmons then opened the floor up to questions from the public, which prompted many critical questions and comments.

One such comment was from town councillor Lynn Coony, who said: “What’s happened her has been appalling – I find it hard to park in town now and my daughter suffers from panic attacks, so we need to be able to park near shops and sometimes that’s impossible.

"You missed a whole demographic of the people you did engagement with, particularly those people with mental health problems. I’m really angry about this, you’ve got residents constantly emailing me saying they don’t like coming into town anymore – please listen to the people of Louth.” The fact that all engagement took place online was also criticised as those who could not access the internet were not able to have their say, as Mr Miller explained that all engagement was online due to the Covid-19 pandemic at the time.

County councillor Alex Hall, ward member for Louth North, described the scheme as being handled appallingly from start to finish, and that people were so frustrated that any further engagement was pointless and that he wants the whole scheme abandoned completely – which was met with applause from the public in attendance.

More concerns came from Caroline Foster, a team member from Louth’s HSBC branch in Cornmarket, who pointed out that the number of customers coming into store had dropped from 650 a month six months ago, to 540 a month now, as some of their more vulnerable customers could not longer access it, and that there were now questions over the viability of the branch.

"If the bank goes, the town goes,” she added.

Further concerns about the impact of businesses came from several business owners, including Peter Cartlidge of Striacroft Jewellers, John Woolliss of Woolliss & Son butchers on Mercer Row and a representative for Helen Grant of H&J Arts and crafts, who all spoke angrily of the impact the lack of parking on Mercer Row has had on their businesses.

Other comments from the public included the scheme not being so much half-baked, not not baked at all, with others describing the county council members who approved the scheme a “disgrace” and calling for them to be sacked.

This was backed up by resident Graham Hill, who asked if the council had considered the health implications of placing the parklets on a busy road, which would leave people “breathing in fumes and gasping for air?”

Mr Miller then agreed that the parklets were clearly the “wrong thing installed in the wrong place”, confirmed that the parklets will not be returning at all, to which the members of the public responded with applause and comments of “what a waste of money”.

He continued that all of the public’s feedback would be passed on to the county council’s transport board, and they will look at different ideas which are more palatable for the public.

Mr Miller added: “I will take away a lot from this meeting – we want to look forward and it’s been a learning curve and we will take forward the positive ideas to the transport board so the council can come forward with what will work and what won’t, and what we want to see happen in Louth.”