SKIPP Press Release (24/01/2012) Shared Space Partial Victory

The Echo has announced victory over shared space, “Southend Council has finally agreed to set out areas at which drivers will be expected to look out for people on foot in Marine Parade” (Echo 23/01/12), But it is only a partial victory.

After an independent safety audit the Council has grudgingly been forced to admit that their seafront shared space experiment has failed and as many groups including SKIPP have said all along, puts the lives of pedestrians, able bodied and disabled, at risk. They have announced that marked areas will be created to allow people to cross the road, however, for reasons best known to them they have fallen short of agreeing to install proper zebra crossings. Also they have agreed to remove their silly and dangerous ‘black balls’ and replace them with tactile paving to indicate the crossing points to blind people. Lets us hope that they consult with Jill Allan-King from the National Federation for the blind (the inventor of tactile paving) and install the correct type, in the correct place, unlike in other areas where this paving is installed.   

This is a partial victory and we hope it will improve safety on the seafront; however, we have serious reservations concerning the failure to agree to the installation of a formal zebra crossing. Furthermore, there seems to have been no mention of installing audible signals on the traffic lights by the Kursaal, a key demand of Jill and the Federation for the Blind.

The SKIPP Committee

Patsy Link

Sheena Walker

Mark Sharp