CPE Coming to the High Street and Citadel

If you’ve been out and about the streets of Rye recently, you may have spotted that a rash of strange symbols and markings has appeared on the roads and pavements. These appear to be indicate future line painting, sign and parking meter installation associated with CPE. This follows the consultation exercise to which the Society responded with constructive suggestions concerning the siting and number of meters.

From the Rye Conservation Society’s perspective, the location of ticket machines is probably of greater interest. These locations are indicated by a painted symbol of a small box with an ‘M/C’ in it. The expectation is that ESCC will stick to their guns ref. their standard issue machines, so their previously proposed number and location has been of particular concern. If the road indications are anything to go by the number of machines has been reduced from sixteen in their original proposals to nine and many have been sensibly relocated. The reduction to nine machines aligns with that intimated at a meeting earlier this year between Rye Town Council reps. and ESCC’s parking officer.

Following a town tour I found machine (‘M/C’) symbols at the following locations:

1. The Strand outside the Old Borough Arms hotel;

2. Wish Street at the corner of Cyprus Place;

3. Cinque Ports St at foot of Market Rd outside Philips & Stubbs;

4. Cinque Ports St outside the Police station;

5. Tower St outside The Waterworks;

6. Landgate outside the Queen's Head;

7. Hilder’s Cliff/High St corner by the outlook;

8. High Street outside the Day Lewis pharmacy; and,

9. East Street/Market Street at the corner beside Seaview Terrace

Many of the locations proposed are on the kerbside, often at wider sections of pavement and adjacent to a lamppost so our concerns about impact on listed buildings, hidden drains and basements seem to have been largely mitigated. As far as I could make out, the only machine to be installed immediately against a building is at the Queen’s Head with the machine located beside the entrance to the twitten that leads down to the petrol station.

The machine on the High Street is probably of greatest concern as it is both cast-adrift from the nearest lamp post (to avoid various services) and is on a relatively narrow section of pavement immediately opposite the George and its scaffolding. This will add clutter to an already pressured section of pavement - see picture. This machine seems particularly ill-advised given the on-going debate about social distancing on the High Street and how to achieve this. Re-locating this machine one lamppost to the east, to a less congested section of pavement beside the Old Grammar School, would avoid many of these constraints.

Whilst ESCC have not responded directly to us on our previous consultation responses, the current locations do reflect the principles and some of the locations we have proposed and we can therefore be assured that what is to be installed represents a significant improvement on previous proposals.

Allan

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