Petition to reclaim Green space for safer parking in Otterbourne Crescent

I refer to your petition about reclaiming green space for safer parking in Otterbourne Crescent in Havant. Please find below details from the Traffic Management and Highways Maintenance team for your information.

Increased car ownership has resulted in increased parking demands particularly in residential areas and we receive many requests to convert verges to parking areas.  It’s commonly not deemed reasonable to convert sections of green spaces including highway verges, into parking bays, or to strengthen it to bear the weight of vehicles.

Our Traffic and Road Safety resources are targeted at casualty reduction with priority given to locations with patterns or clusters of treatable injury accidents. We have access to the Police database of all injury accidents reported in Hampshire and this is used to formulate our traffic and safety scheme programmes.  A study of the injury accident record for the Otterbourne Crescent shows that there are no reported injury collisions, a record that this very difficult to improve upon.  Therefore, from a casualty reduction point of view the conversion of the verge to parking bays would be a low priority.

Hampshire County Council are prioritising safety defects only and a new parking area is not a safety defect.

Hampshire County Council’s Highways Maintenance team is currently unable to fund Capital works such as the parking alterations requested in Otterbourne Crescent. Our priority currently is to discharge our legal duties under the Highways Act to maintain the public highway for all users.

Yours sincerely

Cllr Lulu Bowerman
Executive Member for Highways and Passenger Transport