£155,000 Chichester path approved – but councillors raise safety concerns over lighting
Councillors have approved the use of £155,000 to build a walking, wheeling and cycling path across Chichester’s Oaklands Park.
The money was approved during a meeting of the full council on Tuesday (September 22) and will make up part of the £374,000 cost of the project.
Once complete, the path will run from Wellington Road to Oaklands Way with a spur connecting the path north of Chichester Festival Theatre to Broyle Road. Owned by the council, the park would then be linked to the active travel network, some parts of which are still to be built by the likes of West Sussex County Council.
Jonathan Brown, cabinet member for environmental strategy, said that councillors and members of the public were ‘endlessly frustrated’ by the length of time being taken to add to the network on highways land.
The original budget for the project was £191,000, though this was only an estimate. Full costing meant an extra £28,000 was needed from the business rates pool and £155,000 of Community Infrastructure Levy funds – money contributed by developers.
Now the council will invite tenders to deliver the project by next Spring.
Mr Brown said the new path would not be lit, as that would make the project too expensive and no other funding had been found.
Describing the project as ‘not perfect but still beneficial for a lot of people’, he added: “We’re not part of the Highways Authority, so the question were asked ourselves was ‘can we deliver something useful with some money we have plus some additional resources?’
“To put lighting on the path would make this a quite extraordinarily expensive project.”
The lack of lighting did not sit well with everyone, with concerns raised about safety, particularly for women using it during the winter months.
Mr Brown pointed out that there were no tall buildings such as flats overlooking the park and added: “If a well-lit route is not overlooked then there is no increase in safety. My view would be that, if people feel safer then they will use a route more – and as more people use it it will become safer.
“The formal advice I’ve received is that simply adding lighting won’t in itself make [the path] more safe if it’s not being overlooked by people.”