Chris Boardman, Greater Manchester’s Walking and Cycling commissioner, is urging residents in the Heatons and Romiley to have their say on whether they would like to see an Active Neighbourhood in their area before an engagement exercise closes on October 23rd.
For the past five weeks, Stockport Council has been running an engagement exercise to see if residents would support an Active Neighbourhood in the Heatons and Romiley.
An Active Neighbourhood aims to enable residents to make short trips on foot or by cycle, instead of jumping in their car. Active Neighbourhoods also seek to make local roads safer for everyone as well.
This engagement exercise, using the Commonplace platform, has been created with help from community groups in both Romiley and the Heatons.
The engagement exercise ends on October 23rd but so far in Romiley, residents have made more than 2,100 contributions to the site, which includes people commenting or liking suggestions on the map.
In that Heatons, that figure stands at more than 5,500 contributions.
Chris Boardman, Greater Manchester’s Walking and Cycling Commissioner (pictured, right), said:
Stockport Council is moving at pace with their plans to enable more people to walk, scoot, wheel and cycle everyday trips like going to the shops or going to school.
“Active Neighbourhoods are simply residential areas where people are prioritised over cars. By removing through access to cars, rat-running is stopped and streets can be transformed into areas where kids can play and ride scooters and bikes.
“These changes can be achieved in a number of ways and they don’t have to be big. Additional benches, some planters and tweaks to the road layout is often all that is needed.
“Everyone still has full access to their homes, it just ceases being a shortcut for those that are using your road to hurry somewhere else.”
Cllr David Meller, Cabinet Member for Economy and Regeneration, (pictured, left) said:
I would like to thank everyone who has contributed towards the Heatons and Romiley Active Neighbourhood Commonplace map so far.
“These comments and contributions will help us shape the next stage of the engagement exercise, and will allow us to make better informed decisions when proposals for the area are drawn up. “It is vital that we focus on the key issues that our residents are telling us about and it’s important that the idea of an Active Neighbourhood has wide approval from residents.”
Residents can share their views using the Commonplace maps, with a separate portal for proposals in the Heatons, and in Romiley.