Kendal's pedestrian priority zone will become permanent following a decision by Cumbria County Council's South Lakeland local committee.
County councillors from across the district agreed at their meeting yesterday, Tuesday, October 26th, to make permanent the experimental order that has seen everyday traffic excluded from Stricklandgate from Lowther Street to Library Road.
Since March an experimental traffic order has allowed only buses, bicycles, residents and delivery vehicles into the pedestrian priority zone.
The decision makes the zone permanent and paves the way for work to begin on environmental improvements and landscaping which will make the pedestrian priority zone more attractive and provide defined pedestrian-only areas on the street.
Committee members also agreed that five parking spaces for Blue Badge holders will be created in front of the old Booths store on Highgate and another three created at the back of Beales store. South Lakeland District Council has also agreed to provide 25 Blue Badge parking spaces on the shopping street level of the Westmorland Shopping Centre car park.
But members also agreed to remove cycle lanes from the zone, to investigate ways to improve traffic flows and air quality on Windermere Road and Lowther Street and to explore the possibility of using a special "green badge" scheme to allow disabled drivers broader access to the pedestrian priority zone.
Alan Bobbett, chairman of South Lakeland local committee, said: "We owe it to Kendal's residents and visitors to help maintain an attractive and viable town centre. What we have agreed to do is make the pedestrian priority zone permanent and to continue improving the street scene. We are going to carry on ironing-out problems where they exist and, while there may still be a lot of work to do, there can be no going back to the bad old days of having two lanes of traffic queuing along Lowther Street and Stricklandgate."