Opinion : If it’s not good enough for Marlow then is it good enough for High Wycombe?

I could not help but notice the article that appeared in the news section of this site recently headlined ‘Pay and display parking will not be introduced in Marlow town centre‘.

After a public consultation, held earlier this year, on changes to the parking arrangements in Marlow it seems a large number of people and business owners objected to a proposal to introduce pay and display parking in the town centre.

Now it seems the powers that be who ran the consultation have ruled out the implementation of Pay and Display street parking in Marlow. This decision is of no surprise to my good self.

Of course we have to remember this is Marlow, a town that seems to be molly coddled, wrapped in cotton wool and shielded from most modern day developments.

If only Wycombe was treated the same way maybe we would still have many of the historic building that once graced our town centre, sadly the powers that be authorised their demolition back in the 1960’s.

Regular readers will know that yours truly has given up with Wycombe and my good self is now a regular visitor to Marlow.

Quite honestly the parking situation in Marlow needs to be addressed as there just isn’t enough parking there, especially parking for larger vehicles such as Bentleys, Rollers, Astons and other larger prestigious vehicles that the well to do who tend to frequent Marlow travel in.

So, after reading about the outcome of the ‘Marlow parking consultation’ so far I have been thinking.

There seem to be so many of these ‘consultation’ contrivances going on however they are all to do with new developments. It’s all well and good ploughing ahead with new things but surely once a project has been implemented there should be another ‘consultation’ to see what the public thought to the outcome of the project?

Yes, let’s have two consultations on each project, a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ with the results published publicly with the necessary redaction and anonymisation to protect the respondents identities.

If Marlow can have a consultation on town centre parking then let’s have one in Wycombe too! If something is not good enough for Marlow then is it good enough for High Wycombe?

Future consultation could be proposed to see if residents would like to see changes in Wycombe such as the de-pedestrianisation of Wycombe High Street, if roadside parking needs to be changed or if we are happy with what has been done so far under the guise of the ‘Masterplan’ to name just a few.

If the powers that be have discovered the people of Marlow are so against Pay and Display in their town centre then they should asking us here in Wycombe what we think to the parking in our town, you never know there may be lots of angry motorists in this town too….

What do you think?

My blogs are published every Tuesday and Friday evening around 8.00pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.

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