The first of two public consultations on the new street design for Monnow Street was on Saturday, (Feb 11) with council officers and consultants listening to the wide and diverse opinions from residents, shoppers and traders.

This was a chance for the public to see the revised and constantly-evolving design which will see Monnow Street transform into a 6.3 metre carriageway with six loading bays, six pedestrian crossings, parking for 28 cars and street greening features such as trees and rain gardens.

However the plans are being met with a mixture of applaud and aversion and others accepting the design but with amendments.

With three stakeholder meetings already moulding the design into the one on display last Saturday, councillors and consultants are hoping they have remedied some of the reservations already brought to their attention.

The Beacon went along to the first public meeting to get a flavour of some of the feedback.

Roger and Margaret Stanger felt the street ought to be back to what it was. “When we first moved here there was herringbone parking. It’s an historic old town and people like to come here because of the quaintness.”

Roger was pleased they were going to get rid of the eating shelters: “They remind me of the Cold War era: I did Russia and Czechoslovakia during the Cold War period and they just look like communist bus shelters to me.

“I really love the town and I hate to see all the empty shops and you can’t blame it all on Covid, the town needs to go back to what it was to see if there’s a difference,” he said.

Claire Sullivan, MCC’s Regeneration Project Officer was pleased to see it so busy. “People are taking away the surveys and we want them to comment on what it is,” she said.

“There are a lot of different views. I was one of the people who went out to speak to all the businesses.

“We walked from the bottom of the street to the top, speaking to all the traders we could and I was really surprised how many said they liked it. The overall scheme was 95 per cent positive.

“We delivered 150 letters personally to encourage them to come in today, doing Church Street, Beaufort Court and White Swan Court as well.”

Town Councillor David Evans was positive about the new car park going in at Wyebridge Street and that a “decent plan for 20-22 Monnow Street” (former Christopher’s jewellers) has a passageway going through the back to Chippenham with its pay and display car parks “and coupled with the passageways such as Howells Place should help”.

Chris Rose, sub-consultants with Roberts Limbrick told us: “In November we went down Monnow Street as we needed to see which businesses would be impacted and we asked them about loading and unloading, the tables and chairs and the advertising ‘a-boards’ and asked them what they wanted to see in the scheme and they gave us a wealth of information and we have had three workshops giving us a chance to feed back this information to stakeholders and businesses.”

Just before Christmas the consultants went back out again with a draft design to the 75 Monnow Street businesses and asked the traders what priorities they had and had a formal response from 55 of those traders.

“There is only one legal loading bay in town presently, by Cardzone, pre-covid there was two and what we’ve done in our response is given an extra four. Every business said they want more loading bays,

“We’ve listened and that’s what we done.

“We talked about short-stay parking, disabled parking, had a long chat about the elderly and those that are not Blue Badge holders as well. We fed all this information back in two meetings: one with stakeholders and one with the business community.

“Fundamentally, there has been a real honest, robust and representative view from businesses, it wasn’t 100 per cent because some people were not around.

“We also need to build a trust and a relationship and build a consensus and today is the start of that with the public.

“It’s about striking a balance: We want Monmouth to have a prosperous thriving high street. We also need to look at road safety issues, pedestrian safety and the needs of people in wheelchairs.

On the trees and landscaping, people generally like it with a caveat about maintenance and management.

The planters will eventually go and there will be rainwater gardens to help with street drainage, these will be at kerb height but go into the ground and the plant species will absorb the water and slow the rate going into the drain. Whilst it’s there to look good, it’s also functional.”

Nesta Pearce and her friend Marion Sutton both thought the plans were “dreadful”

Marion asked “how can you have six crossings? The traffic will be backed up and the exhaust fumes will be worse”

“If it was a new town, fair enough, but we have a lovely historic town and our heritage should be so important and we are losing so much”.

Nesta Pearce who recalls living upstairs in Drybridge Street during the flooding of Monmouth in 1947 agreed there were far too many crossings and it would hold up the traffic”

Liz Knight said that she had noticed that Monmouth has become really busy with people

Councillor Catherine Fookes said that the consultants are listening: “Salt and Pepper’s current seating facility will be replaced with tables and chairs in the summer only and they have reduced the number of crossings”.

“People want to be able to cross, the idea is to make it safe,” she added

Sarah Flowers said it looks “French” and added “it would be really nice to cross the road all the way up and down rather than take your life in your hands in the middle.”

Steve Brettle was there with his wife Jan, a former headteacher.

He said “it needs to be improved as long as the shopkeepers are happy about it.

“What I do like there is more pedestrian crossings.”

Jan said Monmouth has an ageing population and there must be parking in the town centre: “Where are they going to park?”

Former town councillor David Stephens said he couldn’t see the plans working that well, “traffic is just too bad” and wanted to know how much is it going to cost to resurface all this.

Chris Gentle, one of the consultants present said they were ‘repurposing’ present parking spaces for additional loading bays. “There are 32 parking spaces now, coming down to 28 to make way for extra loading bays, top middle and bottom of the street

Retired garden designer, Cheryl Cummings said she thought the scheme was “wonderful”.

“More might be made of the planting as its main purpose is to help with drainage and not just to look pretty,” she said.

There is another chance to see the plans today, Wednesday February 15, at the former Ruby Tuesday shop at 22 Agincourt Square.