The owners of Keswick’s new Premier Inn development wants to pull back from providing a puffin pedestrian crossing, despite it being a condition on it receiving planning permission.
Simon Hawkins, a director of Whitbread’s development partner Premcor, said that as part of the process of discharging conditions on the planning permission, the company had been reviewing the requirement of creating a puffin crossing at High Hill between the Coleridge Court junction and access to the Co-op.
“As part of the approved scheme, an existing pedestrian island will be reprovided to ensure hotel guests and team members can safely cross High Hill to access local car parks,’’ said Mr Hawkins.
“With this in mind we have applied to the Lake District National Park Authority (LDNPA) to have the requirement to provide the separate puffin crossing at a distance from the hotel removed.
“Instead, we are proposing to provide a financial contribution towards improving car parking signage in Keswick, in line with the Keswick Transport Study.
“We believe this would deliver more for Keswick in directing visitors to public car parks in the town year-round.”
A sum of £6,243.75 is being proposed instead of the crossing which Gavin Murray, Cumbria County Council’s development management officer, had said was “essential for the clientele of the hotel to safely utilise nearby car parks at Keswick Pencil Museum and the Rawnsley Centre”.
Keswick town councillor David Burn, who spoke in opposition to planning approval being granted for the 71-bedroom hotel at a meeting of the county council’s development control committee last year, said it was his impression that Premier Inn “would go along with the condition, but did not believe in it”.
Cllr Burn said there was a lot of pedestrian traffic crossing between the Co-op and Booths and although he was not aware of any accidents people did “take their lives in their hands’’ particularly with traffic coming round the corner from the Booths direction.
He said that from a pedestrian point of view it made sense to have a traffic light controlled puffin crossing, but added that it could make an already bad traffic situation in the area even worse and predicted there would probably be snarl-ups.
County councillor and LDNPA board member Tony Lywood said he would appeal any variation of conditions put on the development.
“I remember the LDNPA were mindful to refuse but the county council said that they would not have any objections because they said a crossing would be of benefit to the town,” he said.
“There will be no variation as far as I am concerned and I will resist it.”
Anyone wishing to make a comment on the removal of the condition should email [email protected] quoting reference 7/2021/2040.
