On Monday 31 of October West Bletchley Parish Council held a special meeting of its Planning and Environment committee to look at the huge and thorny issue of parking across West Bletchley. It heard from local residents and councillors frustrated at the lack of progress locally on parking. Concerns also included, poor parental parking outside schools.

Parking problems, especially the lack of residents parking, has long been recognised by local Cllrs Mick Legg and Nigel Long as one of the top concerns of residents. The special parish council meeting was held to investigate ways of tackling the problem. It considered a report from Mick Legg. The meeting agreed the following approach:

1. To ditch the current points based parking scheme approach in favour of a residents driven identification of local priorities for new parking.

2. To make a budget provision of at least £20,000 per year to seek match funding from Milton Keynes Council who have put money aside for such provision.

3. To develop parking measures around local schools.

4. To look at restoring the ascot railings programme and how to help residents get dropped kerbs through bulk purchase programmes.

5. To pilot ways to solve problems on the Saints estate then roll them out across all of West Bletchley.

6. To look at how education and enforcement could be used to improve parking and tackle poor parking.

Cllr Mick Legg said, “I am pleased that the parish council has agreed to take action and hope after a period of inaction we can get back to tackling this problem.“

Cllr Nigel Long concluded, “I have long identified roads that need improved parking. I think the parish council got out of the habit of investing in parking and now we are back on course to tackling this major local problem.“