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Local issues
Storrington Pollution
No idling banner lasts two days
Air Quality Group finally publishes meeting notes
As previously reported, we held a prize competition for the children of Storrington Primary to design a logo for a “no idling” banner to be placed on the railings, paid for by Sussex Local.
Well progress of sorts. The Storrington Air Quality Steering Group (AQSG) has finally been forced into publishing “notes” from its meeting held on 31st January, ending with the somewhat vague intention of next meeting “towards the end of March on a date to be arranged”. Presumably this date and venue will not be published in order that the public is able to attend, which seems to fall far short of the usual way council business is managed. The notes were distributed in Storrington together with the press release from Horsham District Council entitled “Storrington Air Quality Update“. This reported “the steps and measures introduced since….2011 plus improvements in the vehicle fleet have resulted in significant improvements to AQ in Storrington.” He points to the 2019 report which states that actually only two measures have been taken 1. The HGV restriction in School Hill 2. Stopping restrictions in North Street and says that these are “anticipated to bring further improvements in air quality”. As we have said previously, both these measures the only proactive measures which have been taken were assessed at improving air quality by 1% each. The AQSG meeting notes report that, in actual fact, even this paltry action isn’t working as HGVs are ignoring the School Hill restrictions, and the North Street restrictions are also being ignored. Mr Rankin hopes that the restrictions on parking and unloading in the High Street will bring an improvement. What was very welcome in the AQSG notes was the item “schemes for consideration”. These include CCTV monitoring, action on the Tesco roundabout; the possibility of installing green walls (walls which have plant growth over them to absorb pollution); anti-idling measures; and to review the items mentioned in the 2017 report to see if any of these should be revisited. The last item in the AQSG notes reported that “work would continue with local schools (on anti idling campaigns at pick up times)”. This is news to Storrington Primary, who have never been asked by anyone other than Sussex Local to join such a campaign. We invited Anna Worthington-Leese, the ASQG chair, to join in our campaign on this several months ago, but we have been studiously ignored and, at the time of writing (mid March) nothing further has been done. Anyway, as we said, progress of sorts.
Sadly, two days after being installed, the banner was found destroyed apparently, according to some reports, due to the wind. No other banners were affected. However the good news is that the Air Quality Steering Group are taking up the mantle of the noidling campaign at schools (see above) so we look forward to seeing some progress on this soon.
HGV protest group forms A new group called Storrington Traffic Action Group (STAG) has formed and has been staging protests by the roadside in March. Their aim is to persuade operators of HGVs to use the West Sussex County Council prescribed Strategic and Local Lorry routes through Storrington and other villages. The A283 through Storrington is not actually included on this map. If you would like to help contact stag20@protonmail.com info@sussexlocal.net
