Please take five minutes to object
INCREASE IN UNSUSTAINABLE TRAVEL & POLLUTION
Here are just some of the reasons that the planning application should be objected on.
- Approximately 200-300 staff on site each day and only 85 staff car parking spaces. The Royal Mail's staff travel survey says 82 will travel by car (but only half their employees responded). Assuming the other 50.3%of employees would respond in a similar way, where will the other 82 cars be parked? In planning or highways terms it is not considered acceptable for a new development to increase parking in and around the local surrounding area.
- Huge rise in 24 hour traffic and heavy goods lorries in the area and on the road network. Further increasing the dangerous nature of the roads and in particular crossing around the proposed five-arm junction area.
- All HGV's will need to take the outside lane on the small roundabout instead of the inside lane for local traffic (coming off at Vale Avenue). This will happen many times per day and poses a real danger to drivers who may not realise what the HGV is doing and try to come round in the local traffic lane.
- They are going to bring articulated lorries into Vale Avenue. The articulated lorries will be turning at the rear of the site on ground not deemed strong enough to support a bridge when the bypass was created.
- Articulated lorries will be causing queues on Vale Avenue while they wait to be let out by drivers queuing on the Patcham Interchange.
- There is a lack of sustainable transport alternatives for employees. This results in a reduction in current sustainable travel methods. (Methods set out by The National Planning Practice Guidance and Brighton & Hove Council).
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There should be a positive contribution to sustainable travel and this is negative with less people walking, cycling and using public transport if the sorting offices move to this site. More people will drive their cars.
- They are proposing to put a pedestrian crossing outside the site on the brow of Vale Avenue. Anyone who crosses there regularly will know how difficult this is and there will be 132 additional red fleet vans nipping about.
- On the plan below they detail that pedestrians line of sight will be blocked when there are articulated lorries moving in the site entrance.
- Their drawings (see above plan where red vans coming into Vale Avenue) and new leaflet do not support the original promises that all red fleet would exit via the A23/A27 and not come through the village.
- 132 Royal Mail red fleet electric vans will be nipping down Church Hill to the exit where the Black Lion Pub / Miller & Carter is and this junction where Church Hill and the London Road join side by side is already very dangerous. The weight of these new electric vehicles on the roads and conservation area homes (as many of these sit directly on the side of the road with no front gardens) should also be a consideration.
- 132 Royal Mail red fleet vans will also be driving down Vale Avenue and right next to the Junior school to go through to their delivery areas. They will all be coming back to the depot for a 3pm departure so everyone should expect the school run to be substantially busier.
- There are not enough bicycle spaces to meet the needs of those who will cycle. The plans include 40 cycle spaces but if we double the number of people saying they will cycle in the survey (completed by 49.7% of staff) this is 44 people. The Royal Mail have completed a travel plan to encourage people to not use their cars and they estimate they can reduce car use from 50% to 35%. Where are the people they are encouraging to cycle going to put their bicycles? This does not create enough bicycle spaces to encourage more sustainable cycling to work.
- Their traffic survey was completed in LOCKDOWN during November 2020 and is not an accurate reflection of traffic in the area on the A23 / A27 road network. There is no use of the TEMPRO Growth method for future traffic modelling and current and future traffic for the road network is flawed and inaccurate. Some of the junctions have not been fully modelled within the Transport Assessment.
- The entrance on Vale Avenue is a busy bypass exit road and vehicles come off the bypass quickly (residents will be fully aware that many cars do not obey the speed limit here). The new location opposite the junction for access to Court Close / Saxon Way creates a new five-arm junction.
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The council's City Plan 2 Policy DM33 states that "all new development should be located and designed to provide good access to public transport services and facilities. The site is located in close proximity to a number of bus stops and routes."
In principle this is true but staff cannot get the bus to work for the time their shift starts. This is evidenced in staff comments in the travel plan:
- Traffic consolidation from the two current sites in North Road, Brighton and Denmark Villas, Hove into one. Traffic will be consolidated into one area and increase idling cars and traffic queueing.
- The A23 / A27 is heavily congested during much of the weekend, when the football or other events are on and just generally quick to back up. Idling traffic will create additional air and noise pollution in a monitored area.
- Their air pollution report and follow up comments to Sam Rouse in Environmental Health detail additional air pollution from customers travelling to collect their post. Royal Mail have categorically denied this will be a collection point to residents.
Further reading on the Staff Travel Plan here