Good news and bad for motorists as The Parade is resurfaced

There was good news and bad news this week for motorists who park their cars at The Parade in Marlborough.

The good news is that overnight on Tuesday, the central parking area – until recently blighted by deep potholes – was resurfaced with shiny new Tarmac.

Wiltshire Council contractors even managed to repaint the white lines during their overnight manoeuvres.

The bad news is that the actual road surface around the parking zone remains un-repaired, and – as town councillors were told on Monday evening – is likely to stay that way.

Councillors cheered and clapped – yes, town council meetings can get that lively – when the news was announced by town clerk Shelley Parker.

They were asked to consider a report prepared by the town clerk, which explained: “The repair work will be to the central triangle only. It will not involve repair work to the carriageway itself.

“Largely due to safety priorities on main routes and busier roads, as well as budget constraints, this road is not on a list of priorities for resurfacing or repair and the current damage in the road does not meet criteria for it.”

“I’m deeply disappointed that the highway will not be done,” replied councillor Bryan Castle, to murmurings of agreement.

Still, on Wednesday morning all 19 spaces had been occupied when Marlborough.News visited to take photographs of the freshly repaired parking area beyond a stretch of  highway once described in a letter to the council as ‘resembling the surface of the moon’.

We can only hope that all motorists parked ‘wholly within a marked bay’.

As councillor Nick Fogg remarked at Monday evening’s meeting, Wiltshire Council had given up perusing motorists for bad parking, because it was arguably impossible to determine where one bay ended and another began.

With the reintroduction of white lines Marlborough’s traffic wardens will, no doubt, be more inclined to ticket infringers.

Meanwhile, the committee declined an invitation to have the 19 existing spaces replaced with 21 slightly narrower ones. Each space would need to be reduced from 2.4m to 2.1m to accommodate another three vehicles.

Given that the new Land Rover Discovery is 2.2m wide (including wing mirrors – and that’s without opening the doors) councillors decided to keep fewer, wider spaces.

* In related Parade news, The Crown public house is to get new signage.

The Crown was rebranded as The Piano Bar in late 2015, but recently reverted to The Crown, and on Monday evening town planners unanimously agreed that its name could will be painted across the front of the listed building in 4m high white letters with black shadow.

New signage will also be added to the rear entrance of the pub.