Please come to the Go Folkestone Litter Pick on Friday at 2pm at the top of the Road of Remembrance. All equipment provided.
I apologise to the 2024 General Election Green candidate Marianne Brett for misnaming her in the last news. You’ve got a chance, given the Greens won the District in 2023, albeit all agree it’s a long shot compared with strong Green hopes in Brighton Pavilion or Eastbourne.
She’s a Hythe resident and runs a company which analyses the green credentials of buildings.
Labour chose a candidate this week, by decision of Labour HQ due to the snap election. But the local candidate Jackie Meade fully supports Tony Vaughan who was chosen. He was brought up in Folkestone by an English dad and Filipino mother, lives in a village near Canterbury, and tried originally for the Dover nomination. He’s a human rights and immigration barrister, obviously sharp, and photogenic.
We continue to monitor the town improvement strategy and are circulating councillors with the following and similar. Thank you to Elizabeth H for her letter on the buses which will be in the magazine. Members, please write to us more with views and reviews.
FOLKESTONE BUS STATION: HOW TO KEEP IT AND STILL HAVE THE TOWN IMPROVEMENT.
Four Go Folkestone members were in the Shepway Bus Users’ Group that met on 28 May and the whole group continued to raise the problem of the Bouverie Square bus station itself. Many still don’t know that under current proposals to spend Government ‘Levelling Up’ money the bus station will close. The surprisingly attractive 1950’s bus station building may be converted to a cafe or waiting room and most of the square will be converted into a little park with quite a lot of paths and hard surfacing.
Currently the buses go in on the Bouverie Place side and out on the western Bouverie Square side with stations on the right for Dover and Canterbury and on the left for Cheriton and Central Station etc. Under the proposals there will be no buses here and 3 large roadside bus stops scattered along Shellons Street etc from past Guildhall St to Bouverie Square.
Go Folkestone, as expressed in regular meetings of 15-24 members checked back against 300 members who occasionally like and almost never demur, currently supports almost every aspect of the Folkestone Brighter Future scheme: two-way main road, footbridge to Guildhall Street, more trees, more 20mph, better market etc but we wonder why a central, neatly circulatory public transport hub is being destroyed. Every Kent town including Canterbury and Ashford has a central bus station and most are less convenient for shops, [a proposed health centre] etc. Deal, Ashford and Dover are as basic and more peripheral. Canterbury is something perhaps to aim at, but Folkestone could trump it, we feel, by having a harmoniously designed cafe right at the centre. Stagecoach could have an office and staffroom on the first floor, and the bus drivers could use the public cafe. The elderly and disabled would not be walking uphill & fair distances to scattered bus stops.
Our suggested compromise or amendment is to keep the cafe and replace the forecourt park with two or three big trees in the centre of the square that don’t interfere with the current circulation much. The eventually ‘specimen’ trees would echo the popular big plane trees in Guildhall Street and at the top of Cheriton Place. A green roof has been suggested but is too expensive. The tiled roof and clock of the 1954 ‘cafe’ are fast becoming ”period”!! The cafe would be popular without a park. The park might be a nice place for a couple of children at a time, but it is hard to see it being well used when kids in town nowadays go to cafes and takeways, and Sandgate Road remains broad enough for some play equipment. Kingsnorth is a beautiful proper Council Park, not far away, that kids actually have birthday parties in, which cannot be beaten.
The intended ‘Bouverie Park’ is the sort of park that potentially draws the dropouts and alkys that don’t mind a view of the toilets and burger outlets. If it must happen it might work, but our meetings always conclude ONLY if the park is policed by the cafe tenant, if there is one, or by an expensive. town centre manager. Yes, people liked it in the online consultation. But how many simply thought: Park. Nice. without further consideration? And how many were actual bus users………………..
How would the money be spent or saved if the little park wasn’t built, and the buses moved quite similarly to now? Well, there doesn’t seem much thought for taxis, so one currently unbuilt bus layby could be adapted to a licensed taxi rank for vehicles licensed to use the bus route. One layby might be unnecessary, and one might be for 21st century developments such as e-bikes, drop offs with a disabled badge or emergency vehicles. Keeping the square would ensure some space for recycling, landscaping, cycle stores etc
Meanwhile, if money is saved by not laying out the little park then the front of the bus station could have fewer canopies because people could then see buses from the cafe,and more [mandatory] window boxes with geraniums etc. And finally the bus station could afford to have electric signs erected: a clear Levelling Up modernisation and improvement.
Maybe it will go through as already set out. But costs may be escalating because of the excessively shallow services found in Forester’s Way and elsewhere. If so, please ‘cut’ the park FHDC, as you already junked the expensive proposed roundabout outside Cafe Brew.
RWallace