Work will not start on Appleby’s controversial flood risk management scheme until suitable alternative parking provision has been secured, town councillors have been told.
A meeting of the town council’s planning and general purposes committee, chaired by Martin Stephenson, was given an update on the Environment Agency’s proposed pumping station scheme to deal with excess flows of water in the Doomgate culvert which will better protect 64 properties in the town centre from flooding.
A well attended information event had been held in the public hall last month at which the Environment Agency had made a commitment not to start work on the scheme until suitable alternative parking was secured, the meeting was told.
Town clerk Sue Gilbertson said that following a request from Appleby Town Council, the Environment Agency had submitted a pre-planning inquiry to what was Eden Council’s planning department regarding an application to locate a secondary compound adjacent to the swimming pool.
This included an inquiry to look at changing the use of this site to public car parking and locating portable buildings to grassland adjacent to Broad Close car park/King George V playing field – or alternatively use this land for public car parking.
A spokeswoman for Appleby Town Council said that the Environment Agency had also begun talks with Oaklea Trust to use the Edenside site for public car parking once the former residential home building had been demolished as a stop gap measure before the new extra care apartments are built there.
“Although none of these sites individually would compensate for the loss of the 65 parking spaces in Broad Close and the loss of about 15 on-street parking bays on Chapel Street for a period of around three months, collectively they would provide a comparable number of parking spaces,” the spokeswoman said.
