The Executive Member for Regeneration and the Director of Regeneration submitted a report for the Executive’s consideration. Middlesbrough Council was proposing to connect Hemlington Grange to the existing pedestrian and cycle network serving Coulby Newham with a new footpath/cycleway, allowing journeys between the two communities for retail, leisure and education to be made safely on foot and by cycle. The purpose of the report was to detail the results of the public consultation exercise carried out for the proposed scheme and to seek Executive approval for the scheme to proceed to the implementation stage.

As with all proposed highway improvement schemes, public consultation had been carried out in order to seek the views of key stakeholders.

Two consultation exercises had been undertaken and a total of 83 responses had been received, with 43 of those responding in favour of the proposed scheme and 40 against.

The main grounds for objection to the scheme were set out in the table below paragraph 20 of the submitted report, together with the response from Council officers in each case.

The results of the second consultation exercise were considered in more detail in Appendix 1 of the submitted report.

OPTIONS

The other potential decisions that had not been recommended included:

a)    Do nothing. That was not recommended, as it would not have provided a safe and direct pedestrian and cycle route that allowed residents of Hemlington Grange to access the retail, leisure and educational facilities in the Coulby Newham district centre by more sustainable alternatives to the private car.

b)    Reassessing the proposed route alignment. That was not recommended, as re-routing the footpath/cycleway via Ridgeway (as suggested by a number of the objectors) would have required pedestrians and cyclists to navigate a circuitous route through an industrial estate where pavement parking took place on a regular basis. Consequently, there were strong amenity, personal security and road safety arguments in favour of the proposed route.

ORDERED

a)    That the responses received during the public consultation exercise be noted.

b)    That the objections to the proposed scheme be considered and mitigations noted.

c)    That the proposed scheme be agreed and progressed to implementation during the 2021/22 financial year.

REASON

There were currently no cycle routes connecting the rapidly growing residential area of Hemlington Grange with the adjacent district centre of Coulby Newham, and the only existing pedestrian route was circuitous and involved negotiating the busy B1365 Stokesley Road via an uncontrolled crossing facility.

The proposed footpath/cycleway planned to address both of those issues and, by doing so, allowed the residents of Hemlington Grange to access local retail, leisure and educational facilities by more sustainable alternatives to the private car, in line with the policies set out in the adopted Middlesbrough Integrated Transport Strategy.