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Church Street Enhancements

Planned enhancements to Church Street, funded by Oswestry BID, are progressing well, and will come to fruition in the coming weeks.

Update 28 Sep 2023

• The new kerbs are nearly installed, and then the surfacing is being poured.
• Once completed, the Hogs can be removed – Hurrah!
• This takes 28 days to ‘settle’, before the ‘anti slip’ surface is applied – this will be coloured red next to the brick pavements, and buff by the York Stone. The colours will gradually fade and blend in.
• Then, after a couple of days, the fab new Street Furniture & Planters can be placed into position.

SOME FAQ

It’s now very difficult to source York Stone in the UK – and, as a consequence, very expensive to ship in.  The new extended “pavements” will have a coloured anti-slip “top”.

The road re-surfacing was scheduled before the enhancement work, so that the bolt down kerbs could be fixed to a new level surface. Also, new drainage is being installed, and it’s much quicker/cost effective to re-surface, then cut in for the new drainage.

The “Blue Badge” bays will be re-instated as it was before and coloured blue for clearer designation. We would appeal to all car users (blue badge holders too) NOT to park in the designated Loading Bays unless they are visibly loading/unloading, as this is causing real problems for our businesses with some suppliers unwilling to deliver to Church Street, if they can’t park in the loading bay.

Background

The plan to provide extensions to pavements, position street furniture with garden planters and seating, as part of a one way system to improve safety for pedestrians while making for a more attractive place to shop and dwell in town.

Church Street initially became one-way during Covid to provide space for social distancing. Then, following the lifting of Covid restrictions, safety concerns were raised by Highways about the speed of vehicles travelling through and overtaking, especially worrying during the night time when people are walking home. This is why the Hogs were left in place – to ensure public safety until more permanent improvements were made.

Given the clear safety benefits provided by the temporary road layout, it was decided to consider making the one-way traffic regulation order permanent – a period of consultation then followed.

BID were also exploring how Church Street could be improved with more pedestrian space, to calm the traffic and ensure safety, whilst enhancing the street scene. These ideas were run past both Oswestry Town Council and Shropshire Council at the Future Oswestry Group meetings.

BID also initiated a series of useful onsite meetings with Shropshire Council Highways, Environmental Associates (Designers), WSP, and Kier. Various proposals were made, though meeting the demands of Highways regulations, funding and resource proved challenging. However, BID continued to research similar projects around the UK to provide significantly improved  town centre street scenes while meeting the demands of highways legislation.

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