St Mark's You Said We Did
The outcomes of the consultation were shared in a leaflet in Summer 2021, this outlined elements that the council wanted to deliver over the next year as St Mark's opened it's doors to the first year of secondary school pupils (year 7).
The feedback and workshops had highlighted a number of other potential concerns by local residents but everyone recognised that St Mark's would grow organically over the next five years as year 8 would only exist from September 2022 and year 9 from 2023 and so on until all five years were full. So it is likely that this will be revisited in later years to review if further measures are needed.
For now the main elements being delivered in this school year would tackle safety for pupils walking to school to reassure parents that their child would be safe walking or cycling. There are also some measures to deter parents from driving their children to school.
Design workshops
St Mark's ATZ Co-design workshops
Members of the neighbourhood and businesses around St Mark's C of E School were invited to attend our online co-design workshops on 10 March. Thirty-one residents worked together to explore potential measures for addressing their concerns - including through-traffic, speeding and parking - in the following key areas:
- Malmesbury Road / Stafford Road / Suffolk Avenue
- Shirley Road
- Greville Road / Thornbury Avenue / Darwin Road / Howard Road
In each group, participants’ comments and suggestions were recorded on a map, as you can see in the examples below. Click to expand each image:
After discussing a range of potential measures for each location, including their own suggestions, participants were asked to vote on them. Here is a summary of the results from the four groups showing the most popular measures within each area:
Our design team will now assess the input from both the perceptions survey and co-design workshops in detail. We will present the potential schemes for each location back to the community in Summer 2021.
St Mark's ATZ Perception Survey
116 respondents answered questions about travelling in and around the St Mark's area. They were asked what areas could benefit from improvement, and what improvements areas require. The survey was available from 14 December 2020 to 15 January 2021.
91% of respondents live within a 20-minute walk, 83% are residents and 19% are parents of children at the school
60% of respondents travel to the area on foot:
9/10 survey respondents felt that the area around St Mark's School could benefit from improvement, with the main concerns in the area being:
- pavement conditions
- air quality
- traffic noise level
- provision of cycle lane/paths
- ease of crossing roads
Malmesbury Road and Shirley High Street/Road are the roads that are most in need of improvement and the most mentioned improvements were reducing through traffic and reducing the speed limit.
