The wider council policy context
Our Corporate Strategy sets out what we as a council plan to do, how we plan to do it, and how we will measure our performance. Our main aim is to improve people's lives, and we are following two core policies to do this: tackling the climate and nature emergency and giving people a bigger say. This consultation, and the policy it concerns, addresses both strategies:
- It sets out proposals which will prioritise available on-street parking for local residents
- It gives you an opportunity to comment on our proposals, and take an active part in how this scheme moves forward
Air quality, managing traffic flows and availability of parking are all significant issues in our region, particularly in the city of Bath. We have a number of ongoing projects which are addressing these issues, including the following:
- Promoting a major shift to mass transport, walking and cycling, with incentives to reduce the use of more polluting vehicles, in accordance with the UK government National Air Quality Strategy
- Our policy and work on Liveable Neighbourhoods aims to reduce the dominance of vehicles in residential areas, particularly through-traffic, whilst maintaining vehicle access to homes and businesses. We can do this through a range of measures including prioritising walking and cycling infrastructure, limiting through traffic, traffic calming, one-way streets, and residents’ parking zones.
- Bath's Clean Air Zone, which encourages less polluting ways of travelling around the city centre
- Improving the safety of cyclists and pedestrians through Active Travel Schemes which rebalance priorities on our roads and build on social distancing needs
- Co-ordinating and consulting on our Journey to Net Zero
The parking policy context
Our approach to managing parking aligns closely with our wider aims as a council to promote more active ways of travel, encourage take-up of lower emissions vehicles, and to rebalance our roads and neighbourhoods so that motor vehicles become less dominant.
Read our current parking strategy, adopted in 2020.
Local context
In this consultation, we are seeking views on the introduction of an RPZ in the Walcot, Snow Hill and Claremont Road area. An RPZ will help to prioritise on-street parking for residents and will reduce the number of non-resident visitors looking for somewhere to park.
This area is also being considered for improvements under our Liveable Neighbourhood Programme (LN). A liveable neighbourhood (Walcot Phase 1) is proposed for the majority of the RPZ area we are proposing, excluding Claremont Road. We will begin co-designing the proposed LN with the community while we run this RPZ consultation. The liveable neighbourhood will be consulted on separately once the co-design phase is complete.
Related consultations
We are also consulting on six other RPZ schemes, which we are proposing will be in: