Newbury town centre pedestrianisation to be extended

Pedestrianising Newbury town centre looks set to move into an experimental phase in the coming months.

West Berkshire Council wants to extend the hours that cars can’t use the town centre.

It wants to create more space for pedestrians, areas for seating and planting, ‘spill-out’ space for cafés and restaurants and flexibility for larger events.

Northbrook Street, Bridge Street, Bartholomew Street (north), Mansion House Street, Wharf Street and Market Place are roads within Newbury town centre that are subject to a time-limited restriction that prohibits access to motor vehicles between the hours of 10am and 5pm daily.

Currently between 5pm and 10am through traffic is permitted to use these roads.

Access for deliveries to shops and businesses also takes place while the roads are open to traffic.

Many of the premises within the restricted area do not have access to the rear and can only be accessed from the road.

When the Parkway development opened in 2011 and Park Way canal bridge closed to general motor traffic, buses were removed from the restricted area and diverted to Park Way instead.

The commitment in the Council Strategy is to trial an extension to the pedestrianised timings in the evenings.

It is intended that this would be for a minimum of six months to enable the council to gauge the impact and to seek views from the local community and stakeholders on the changes.

The new pedestrianised timings would be 10am to 11pm with non-critical deliveries and access allowed outside of these times.

Potential outcomes of the trial, dependent on responses, would be to make the trial permanent following the trial period or revert to the current situation.