SIR,
The county council is showing a serious lack of 'joined-up thinking'. Currently, there are incomplete plans for/ doubts about the use of:
a. Shire Hall
b. the former market hall (housing the Nelson Museum and One Stop Shop)
c. the former cattle market.
These should not be considered in isolation from each other.
2. Parking space is more important than the proposed civic space and better setting for events and festivals. For almost all the time these would be under-used and a focus for vandalism and anti-social behaviour.
Visitors would find neither appealing.
3. The market should be returned to Agincourt Square. Available space could be increased by unlocking all gates in the Shire Hall railings, closing Agincourt Street on market days and using the Beaufort yard.
These areas are sheltered; unlike the Gateway Project area which is often windswept and cold.
When Monmouth had a by-election some years ago, the TV cameras loved button holing people in Agincourt Square on market days.
I think it unlikely that they would feel the same way about the former cattle market.
4. The Music Festival could move back to Agincourt Square or perhaps to Vauxhall Fields.
The space allocated in the Monmouth Gateway plans would not be big enough and it makes no sense for the largest car park in town to be out of use when the largest number of people need to use it.
5. Blestium Street is already congested; two out of three of the options suggest narrowing it.
6. Coaches, usually full of elderly people, need two drop off points; one at the top of town so that they can stroll downhill and the other at the bottom to pick them up.
I know from personal experience as a tour guide that, if dropped at the bottom, most would not get as far as Shire Hall.
7. Monmouth's pubs, restaurants and shops do not need competition from anything in the Gateway Project area.
There are two pubs and a chip shop in the immediate vicinity.
I cannot help thinking that those in charge of the chance to meet those who designed the Gateway project on 1st March were not keen to see too many members of the public.
There was no poster outside The Robin Hood to say there was a meeting, inside there were no arrows to show where to go and when I stuck my head into the back bar looking for it and didn't see the small room on the left, neither of the people sitting in the bar (who turned out to be two of the designers) said a word.
The three designs are now on display in the entrance to the Nelson Museum. Please go and have a look.
Comments need to be in by Friday 15th March.
Pat Lacy
(Coleford)