Home Zones
Home Zones are a Dutch concept. The overall aim of the Zones is to reclaim residential streets from vehicles and give them back to the residents. They reduce speeds improve parking and make the areas outside homes more inviting and useful spaces. We believe that the areas of Kilworth Avenue, Hastings Road and Cromer Road are ideal for this purpose.
LINKS for more info
Current Situation
All of the mentioned roads suffer from and in no particular order
Kerb Crawling, the area is adjacent to a know red light area, this results in overspill prostitution.
Speeding vehicles, early on in the process of setting up the Kilworth Avenue Neighbourhood Watch we requested speed monitoring equipment, however, this has never been forthcoming
Overspill Parking, Lloyds who run a local processing centre and also the town centre contribute to daytime parking which means local residents must at times park a long distance from their homes. The proposed development on the Sea Front and the redevelopment of the Seaway Car park will in the short to mid-term result in surrounding streets being used for parking. This will result in late night noise and disturbance for the residents
Criminal damage to vehicles and property. The general run down appearance of the area is conducive to increasing these problems.
Slum Landlords A less than desirable neighbourhood with many “slum” landlords and run down housing. an area of low demand. These landlords have no regard for the local community in the people they house. We are at something of a loss to understand why, as business premises these landlords are allowed to get away with the disruption they cause to residents
Antisocial behaviour by some residents and also late at night after chucking out time
Conclusion
All of the above could be dealt with by various means
Kerb Crawling, Criminal damage and antisocial behaviour, could be dealt with by more policing, especially in the evenings, more covert operations to combat Graffiti in the underpass etc, perhaps even an extension of the CCTV system in York Road.
Overspill parking the introduction of resident only parking and local authority enforcement, or a limited wait time system for non-residents
Speeding cars – Introduction of a 20mph zone and various flat top and width restriction measures
Slum landlords, the introduction of licensing as allowed by recent legislation in areas of low demand
Would a Home Zone Help
The introduction of a home zone may well deal with the problems more permanently.
It would help to make the area more desirable, this has already been the case with an active NHW in Kilworth Avenue, which has seen great improvement over the last few years, but the level of all of the above mentioned problems is still greater than it should be. We believe the slum landlord situation would fall away as the area became more desirable. Traffic must give way to pedestrians in a home zone and with no pavements kerb crawling etc becomes very apparent and easy to stop. Parking can more easily be restricted to residents and visitors and the improved aesthetic of the area will promote care.
Proposal
That we approach Southend Borough Council and others, ie Lloyds Bank to get support for a scheme to turn the area into a Home
We hope to have more information and links posted at www.kilworth.org.uk within the next few weeks.