KINGSBRIDGE Town Council along with district and county councillors have clubbed together to commit £15,000 to fix the pavements on Fore Street and Bridge Street.

The state of the pavements has become an urgent issue in Kingsbridge recently, with at least four people being injured by tripping and falling on broken and wobbling paving slabs.

Devon County Councillor Julian Brazil told the Kingsbridge Town Council meeting on Tuesday, September 13, that DCC were planning to fix the worst bits of Fore Street pavements, the middle of the right hand side of the road, and install eight ‘strategically placed bollards’ on the pavement to prevent parking.

He called it a ‘great team effort’ of the town council lobbying the county for the works in this financial year. He also said that he had some unspent money in his ‘Investing In Devon’ budget which he is prepared to use to ‘get as much done as possible in one hit’.

He also asked whether the town council would put forward some of the money from reserves to ‘get a proper job done’, including Bridge Street, another danger area, which would cost an extra £5,000 to repair.

Chairing the meeting while Kingsbridge Mayor Cllr Chris Povey is on holiday was Cllr Anne Balkwill, who asked Cllr Brazil ‘if we can find the money, could we got all of it done in this financial year? Because all my volunteers at the museum keep falling over.’

Cllr Brazil said ‘this is my hope’. He said the county had put forward £11,000 for the bollards and the worst bits, and if he invested his £10,000 ‘Invest In Devon’ budget and the town council invested some reserve cash ‘we can pretty much do the whole of Fore Street and Bridge Street’.

Cllr Keith Wingate said he could donate at least £500 from his Community Facilities Fund, and the town council said they could find the other £4,500 to add to the £10,000 from Cllr Brazils fund to lobby the county to fix the pavements on the whole of Fore Street and Bridge Street in this financial year.

Talking about enforcement of parking on pavements and in loading bays, Cllr Brazil said: ‘What I find incredibly disappointing is that we used to have a system where we had the same traffic warden for the car parks and the on-street car parks.’

Cllr Tom Coulthard agreed saying ‘when we had our own traffic warden, he was familiar with people working in the town and they were familiar with him and there was room for some give and take.’

Steve Russell, from Steve’s Taxis, spoke at the public open forum at the town council meeting to ask the town council to ask for a dedicated parking enforcement officer for Kingsbridge.

‘Can you request a full-time parking officer in Kingsbridge again?’, asked Steve, ‘Like we used to have, due to the parking on pavements and the parking in loading bays, which is causing congestion and the damage to pavements.’

He said SHDC had eleven parking enforcement officers and he wondered whether Kingsbridge, Dartmouth, Ivybridge and Totnes could have full-time officers, seven-days-a-week, with the other seven floating around to villages, beaches, and other places.

Kingsbridge Town Clerk, Martin Johnson, said: ‘We asked for an enforcement manager to come and discuss this and we have John Ireland, a senior enforcement officer, coming to see us in October, to discuss parking matters in Kingsbridge. We will take it up on your behalf.’

Kingsbridge Town Council hold their full council meetings every second Tuesday of the month in Quay House, starting at 7pm and usually ending by 9pm. Everyone is welcome to attend and 15 minutes is set aside at the beginning of every meeting to allow people to make statements and ask questions of the council.