Town plan to be published (From Gazette Series)

Town plan to be published

A BLUEPRINT for the future of Berkeley has been agreed and is due to be published next month.

A steering group in the town, comprising members of the town council, Stroud District Council, Gloucestershire Rural Community Council and the Countryside Agency, has produced the plan, titled Berkeley in to Future, aimed at improving the town and making it more attractive to visitors.

Town councillor Valarie Watts said this week: "The town council decided with Stroud District Council to prepare a town plan several years ago.

"The first thing that was done was to hold a town survey in 2002. Once the results were analysed it was decided to go forward with the plan.

"The aim was to get a plan that the whole community would benefit from and work out who we would need to work with to achieve it.

"We held several community events last year to try and find out the strengths and weakness in the town and where the community would benefit from improvements.

"We then held a stake holders meeting and invited traders and people who had special knowledge of the area and now we have set up four working groups to target different areas - transport and accessibility; business and tourism; youth, leisure and community safety; and employment, education and training."

She added that the consultation had shown that issues the community felt needed addressing included parking, attracting tourists and making the town safer.

"People are concerned about the lack of parking and we want to get some disabled parking in Berkeley because we do not have any," she said.

"We are also trying to get an unloading bay for Salter Street because there is a lot of double parking which is dangerous.

"Berkeley has the Jenner Museum and the castle but people don't come into the town. What we are trying to do is get some better literature on Berkeley and the possibility of having an information point and to get things that people want to come and see.

"We want to introduce CCTV cameras in the town because we need them in the town centre where we have the problem at the moment."

Cllr Watts added: "It is quite a busy time and there are a lot of things that can be done for Berkeley. We are quite excited that we may be able to get a large percentage of them underway."

The plan will be published in June and a simplified version will be delivered to all homes and businesses.