Red routes are coming to Medway
Plus the end is in sight for Pier Road's blue boards, and polite students heckle Keir Starmer at MidKent College
Editor’s note: Welcome to our Friday news update. This week, we’ve been setting up some new social media accounts. So for a more visual way to follow Local Authority, we’re now on Instagram, years after it was the cool place to be. We’ve also launched on Threads, Instagram’s new Twitter clone, which seems rather nice so far. Join us there to get updates on our latest stories and probably some behind the scenes content from Local Authority Towers too.
Red routes are coming to Medway
Big news for strategic road network fans this week as Medway Council announced plans to develop a set of red routes in our towns.
Red routes are roads that are like any other, except instead of having double yellow lines where you can’t park, you have double red lines. They were first introduced in London in 1991 and have become widespread throughout the capital, and have since been used in other urban areas across the UK.
While you might get away with stopping on double yellows for a bit, the red routes have more of a “don’t you even think about it” vibe to them.
You can’t park, stop, pick up, or drop off on a red route. No, not even if it’s “just for a minute” or “I was just helping my nan unload her shopping”. You can’t even park on a red route with a disabled blue badge, something you can do for a while on double yellows. Rumours a sniper will take you out from the other end of the street if you ever drop below 10mph remain unconfirmed, but the gist is simple: don’t ever stop here.
The idea is that on vital busy routes, even people stopping for a few minutes to make a delivery or pick up a passenger can have knock-on effects on people’s journeys. Hence the introduction of red routes and fines can be imposed much more strictly than on other roads.
As a result, Medway Council plan to introduce red routes in three areas:
Corporation Street and Star Hill in Rochester
The Brook and Best Street in Chatham
A2 High Street in Rainham
This a mixed bag of roads. Corporation Street and The Brook certainly face huge congestion during peak times, but that is mostly down to the sheer volume of traffic on those roads rather than a delivery driver making a drop.
On the other hand, Star Hill is often blocked by cars pulling over with their hazards on to pop into one of the houses, while Best Street is littered by cars randomly dumped so people can collect parcels. The High Street in Rainham felt like an odd choice, but sources in the area suggest commercial vehicles parking on the street can be an issue.
Slightly more curious are some of the streets that are missing from the list. The A2 Rainham Road in Gillingham is regularly blocked by vehicles making deliveries or dropping off, and it’s hard to know where to even start on the nature of parking on Luton Road in Chatham.
Overall though, it’s difficult to find much to complain about in these proposals. If you aren’t parking your car where you shouldn’t, there’s nothing to worry about, and ideally, it’ll make things at least a little easier for those driving around our towns. If the plans go ahead, the first Medway red routes should be in place by the end of the year.
If you have strong opinions on the introduction of red routes in Medway, you can take part in Medway Council’s consultation on the issue here.
The end is in sight for the blue boards
Long-time readers of Local Authority might be aware of the saga of the blue boards on Pier Road. Even if you’re unfamiliar now, you’ve almost certainly seen them.
The ‘temporary’ hoardings were installed in 2009 after the retaining wall next to the dual carriageway became unsafe. Since then, because the boards were only rented by Medway Council, they have racked up a cost well in excess of £50,000.
Our very own Steven Keevil was so frustrated about the boards that he wrote a whole piece trying to get to the bottom of what had gone on:
Well, joyous news this week as work finally got underway to fix the retaining wall and make the footpath fully accessible for pedestrians once again.
Contractors arrived on site earlier on in the week, and have so far managed to completely close the path ahead of work starting. That work is scheduled to take a mere 23 weeks, meaning the blue boards should be gone, the wall repaired, and the path back open again just in time for Christmas. Just 14 years after the boards went up.
Who says local councils can’t get things done?
Polite students heckle Keir Starmer at MidKent College
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has been spending a lot of time in Medway recently. He was here multiple times during the local election campaign and came back again to celebrate the results once Labour took control of Medway Council.
He came back again this week to deliver a big policy speech on education, but no one took any notice of that because he ended up being heckled by the world’s most polite climate protestors.
Standing awkwardly behind Starmer for ten minutes before beginning their protestors, the pair eventually unfurled a banner, before gently interrupting him with an “Excuse me, Keir”. Say what you want about the youth, at least they’re polite.
A minute or so of awkward back and forth on whether the Labour leader had u-turned on environmental policy before they were escorted off stage. The speech then continued, but all of the headlines were about the protest.
Interestingly, neither of the protestors were students at MidKent College, nor were they members of the Labour Party. Yet they were able to get on stage immediately behind Starmer just by turning up at the right time, even managing to tweet their message while waiting for him to arrive. Incredible stuff.
It wasn’t the only weird thing that happened at the event either. One enterprising TikTokker decided to steal Starmer’s glass of water after the event for some reason.
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It’ll be interesting to see how eager Starmer is to return to Medway again in the near future.
Medway Question Time is coming soon
There are less than two weeks until our first Medway Question Time event and tickets are flying out the door. Submit questions for our Medway panel and come along to hear some answers and discussion on the current and future state of Medway.
Our panel for this first event features:
Vince Maple, Leader of Medway Council
Elizabeth Turpin, Deputy Leader of Medway Conservative Group
Cat Jamieson, Medway Green Party
Simon Cook, Chair of Medway Place Board
Rose Stokes, Chair of Medway Youth Council
Medway Question Time is taking place on Wednesday 19 July at MidKent College (please don’t come and steal someone’s water) in Gillingham. Tickets are free, but booking is essential. You can find out more information and book tickets on our Eventbrite page.
Future Medway Question Time events will take place all over Medway, and we can’t wait to tell you where the next one is going to be held…
In brief
🚧 Station Road in Strood has reopened early following a week of bringing the town centre to a standstill.
⛏️ Giant Stone Age artefacts have been discovered in Frindsbury. The items were unearthed as part of excavation works for the new Maritime Academy school.
👃 Strood Academy has launched a clampdown on the scourge of, er, nose piercings. This has led to students being taken out of classes during exam preparation for the crime of having a nose stud.
🍸 The Mixologist in Rochester has closed after only one year. The fancy cocktail bar on the High Street decided it couldn’t continue this week, which is a shame as it was rather nice.
Can you help us?
We’re looking to speak to anyone attending the Rochester Castle Concerts this week. If you’re going to any of them, please drop us an email afterwards to let us know your experience, good or bad. Particularly interested in how well organised they are from a visitor's point of view.
Email hello@localauthority.news if you’re able to help out with the above either on or off the record, or if you have any stories that might be of interest to our readers.
More Authority
As always, paid supporters of Local Authority receive full extra editions of the newsletter every week. This week, we took a sail down the Medway on a free public sailing of the Edith May barge and sat down to interview the Chair of Medway Youth Council, Rose Stokes.
Coming up this week, we have an exclusive interview with the former Labour MP Jonathan Shaw, as well as our monthly planning update on what is in the pipeline for our towns.
Becoming a paid supporter ensures we can keep this thing running for the long term and costs less than £1 per week when joining us for a year. Please consider it if you can!
Footnotes
If you’re visiting the Chatham Carnival tomorrow (Sat 8 July), we’ll be there with a stall selling bits from our merch store and Local Authority paid subscription discounts. Come and say hello if you’re about!
Music that soundtracked the creation of this newsletter: Withdraw by Fresh, Fortitude Valley by Fortitude Valley, Dress Up by The Spook School, and Beat Happening by Beat Happening.
Agree that it's far from the only place in Medway with a problem with drivers using their park-anywhere lights to sit on double-yellows, but A2 in Rainham will definitely benefit from this. Being relatively narrow and relatively congested already (and a bus route), the stretch from Nationwide to the traffic lights can be particularly hard to navigate when there are cars and vans pulled up to use the cash machine/grab a takeaway/place a bet. Not to mention some of the strange parking choices made outside Dominoes! Hopefully it will be a positive improvement overall - the ANPR enforcement means it might even be respected rather than ignored.