Object

Representation ID: 23055

Received: 16/03/2020

Respondent: Hingham Town Council

Hingham was not deemed important enough by South Norfolk Council for them to continue to provide such a basic facility as public toilets. The public toilets were under threat of closure by South Norfolk Council, and would have been permanently closed had the Town Council not take over the ownership of them.

Hingham has several services/facilities that are inadequate to support growth within the town. The Library is not housed within a purpose built facility however, it provides a range of valuable roles to the local community, as well as access to education for children and adults through books and use of the internet, the library supports health and wellbeing with books on prescription and is a valuable community resource for social get togethers such as knit and natter, coffee mornings, sessions for parents and babies and IT support.

The historic nature of Hingham means that is has substandard and narrow footways in places. There is no pedestrian priority crossing places. There is no public car park and no high school. There is no commitment to increase the capacity at the primary school and Drs surgery, and increased capacity would come with the additional problems with lack of parking.

It is unrealistic to conceive that in a rural area with a limited bus service, businesses within the “Key Service Centre” can flourish without the provision of adequate public parking. It is essential that businesses can encourage and obtain support from visitors to the town from nearby villages. If the small independent businesses within the Hingham cannot flourish they will close and residents of Hingham will also have to travel further afield to shop. Adequate public parking must be addressed, not only for visitors to the town but those residents that need to access local services and businesses using a car due to ill health or mobility issues.

Parking facilities for existing community buildings – within Hingham these are insufficient to support growth and to enable these facilities to thrive. The Lincoln Hall/Bowls Club/Library and the Sports Centre parking areas are inadequate in size to accommodate visitors to these venues during busy times, and it is of concern that the venues will lose bookings and revenue if they cannot provide adequate parking facilities for their potential customers.

The policy document notes that Hingham has "good transport links". This is not an accurate description. The Joint Core Strategy 6.53 describes Hingham as having a limited bus service”, since the JCS was adopted there has been a reduction in bus services and threats of loss of the already severely limited direct bus service to Dereham .

In terms of employment the policy document states Hingham is "well located to benefit from additional employment opportunities in the Cambridge Norwich Tech Corridor" - this does not seem an accurate description in the context of reliance on public transport when there is one bus an hour to the Research Park and a bus to the Hethel Innovation Centre (which is a 20 minute drive) would take 2 hours via Norwich.

This description is akin to calling Hingham a “commuter town” which is not indicative to the ethos of “Growing Stronger Communities Together”
There is no evidence in the policy of commitment to provide improved infrastructure in Hingham to enable the town to sustain the quoted 120 new homes, in particular additional primary school places and improvements to the road and footway network in the town.

With no commitment to improving infrastructure within the town, there seems to be no benefit to the residents of Hingham (the Community), of being deemed a “Key Service Centre”, just the burden of additional housing development.