PREVIOUS plans to give a facelift to Commercial Road, the focus of the Adver’s Don’t Top 20 campaign, stalled after costings of ambitious plans ran into millions, but redevelopment is set to take place.

In 2012, Swindon Council considered the extension of a Local Development Order (LDO) to enable businesses to change use of properties without planning consent.

Plans running alongside those proposals were scrapped after costings were found to run towards the region of £9m to improve parking and connect Commercial Road firmly with the rest of the town centre.

Garry Perkins, cabinet member for economy, regeneration and skills, said Commercial Road would be redeveloped as part of the town centre masterplan but other areas required more urgent attention.

“We had changes to the road fully costed when Rod Bluh was leader,” said Coun Perkins. “The main problem we have is that half the pavement is owned by the businesses and the other half by the council.


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“That makes it keenly difficult to get agreement from everybody. Some people use their space as a car park and do not want to give up that space. Not only that, but all the main services are running along the pavement edge on both sides of the road.

“With that in mind the full cost of what we wanted to do there was a figure approaching £9m.

“We wanted to install some parking bays to open up the whole area to join up with the town centre. The concept we hoped might have cost a couple of million and could have been achievable, but when it was fully costed it came out as more than £8m.

“At the moment we have the town centre and Commercial Road runs parallel to it, not really part of the town centre and unless you are going to Commercial Road you have no need to use the side roads.

“The idea was to open up some of the other roads in and around the car park and develop there. If the car park was developed that could spill out onto Commercial Road and drive development back into the town centre.

“This is a longer term ambition at the moment because there are areas such as Fleet Street which require urgent attention. We want to clear the streets completely and attract shops and shoppers back to the area.”

Coun Perkins added that more needed to be done in Commercial Road alongside a 20 mile per hour restriction.

“The 20 miles per hour limit has to be extended all the way to the bottom of Commercial Road but we also have the situation where three lanes are merging into one lane,” he said.

“There is no point in forcing vehicles into a pinch point, and I would like to see the whole road reduced to a single lane. Recently I saw one chap trying to chase the queue on the inside lane while there were cars queueing all the way down the road, only to face the bus lane.

“Reducing it to one lane would give us the chance to use the other side for loading and unloading vehicles. On that inside lane you could also use it to enable people to get in and out of the car park.”