Hertford - A Commentary

This page discusses recent and present issues in the town. Like many traditional town centres, Hertford has suffered with the move to out-of-town shopping and the effect of private motoring. The town has particular problems in that it has a number of larger new towns nearby offering both retail and entertainment developments with which it cannot compete with on a level playing field. With that in mind it has to develop a strategy that sets it apart from the competition. Listed below are some of the features that have come to dominate discussions about how the town can develop.

• Planning Failures
• The Cinema
• Town Centre Enhancement Scheme
• Traffic Management
• Parking
• Old Cross Junction
• Local Radio Station
• Restaurants

Planning Failures

There have been a number of bad planning decisions made over the last thirty years that have had a considerable impact on the town. These have been to its' detriment. Most development in the town centre is piecemeal and this doesn't help. The town centre enhancement scheme was a phased scheme that began five years ago and has as yet only covered the eastern end of the town. Some of the experimental traffic scheme initiated a number of years ago is also still in place. In summary, there is a lack of centralised planning or a vision for the town, although a Town Centre Management Board has recently been set up.

The Relief Road. In the 1960's a dual carriageway was carved through the heart of the town and it's main graveyard. Many old and ancient buildings were destroyed. Whilst it is not contended that a relief road or bypass was necessary the wrong route was taken and the town has been scarred since.

Knocking down the last cinema. Apart from the fact that the County Cinema was the town's last cinema, it was also a prime example of 1920's Art Deco architecture. It was demolished in the early 1980's despite a public outcry and replaced with offices that stood empty for years. There are now plans to build a new cinema in the town

The Bircherley Green Shopping Centre. An ugly shopping centre that saw much expense spared. There are many empty shops (this is true of the town in general, like many others).

Destroying the Christ's Hospital Chapel. Admittedly the local authorities were against this, as were the people of the town. However, Tesco's took it to appeal and won and built a supermarket.

At the beginning of the year, plans for a four screen cinema in Mill Road, Hertford were submitted to the local authority by Metrodome plc. The plans include a snooker hall and 14 lane bowling alley. If planning permission is granted work should begin in late 1998 or early 1999.

Although there is much support for this scheme, both from the Town Council and the general population, there is concern amoungst local residents at the noise and lack of parking - only 50 or so places for a cinema that has seating for 600.It has been pointed out that there is a nearby public car park, but this has only 90 places and is not accessible using the logical route to the leisure complex.

In the early 1990's, like many towns, Hertford embarked on a Town Enhancement Scheme to improve the attraction of the town. This started around The Shire Hall and later took in Parliament Square and the western end of Railway Street. However, the scheme seems to have ground to a halt, with the local authority saying at one stage that it did not have the finances to maintain the existing enhancements. It is also lamentable that the utilities have carried out minor works within the enhancement area and not replaced the expensive York paving stones, using instead cheap tarmac. In fact Fore Street (not within the current enhancement area) is a patchwork of different surfaces and a gift to anyone with an I-Spy book of pavements!

Traffic Management in Hertford has always been a controversial issue. This is partly due to the fact that the A414, which runs through the town, forms part of an outer alternative to the M25 London Orbital Motorway. Whenever the M25 is blocked at its' Northern edge, the volume of traffic passing though the town increases dramatically leading to long delays. The releif road, which was controversially driven through the centre of the town in the sixties, forms part of this route and is where most of the delays occur, leading to vehicles using the town centre as a bypass to the bypass! Studies show that more than half the traffic using the town is simply passing through and initiatives have been suggested as to how to deal with this, although an outer bypass has been rejected by both residents and the local authority on ecological grounds.

In the mid-nineties an experimental traffic scheme was implemented in the town centre. Although the scheme has been permanently adopted on a de facto basis, much of the temporary work remains in place. Problems in town centre traffic management remain though, much of it connected with parking.

As with many market towns up and down the country, both the volume of traffic and parking are a major concern. Historically, the limits of the town centre have been confined. Over the last thirty years only two new car parks have been developed - the Gascoyne Way Multi-Storey Car Park and the facilty on Hartham Common, with around 90 spaces. A new multi-storey car park was developed at Bircherley Green in the 1980's but this replaced a facility on the site of the former Bus Station. Matters have not been improved by the local authority's determination to try to exclude cars from the town centre by limiting available spaces in the hope that the public would utilise public transport instead. There is also a particular problem with long term parking. Over the last few years there has been an increase in the amount of office space in the town and this has led to alot of workers parking in residential streets. This is also the case with commuter parking, where workers drive into the town to use the two stations an park in residential areas. The East station in fact has only a dozen or so spaces. There have been proposals by the council for parking schemes in these areas but these have been resisted by residents who are unwilling to pay because they see the problem as having been partly created by the council itself.

The busy junction in Hertford's Old Cross became an issue when Hertfordshire County Council imposed a £50,000 traffic-light scheme on the site without consultation. Since then there has been much debate on the subject, much of it centreing on the resulting traffic congestion around the junction. HCC claim that pedestrian safety lay at the heart of their decision to install traffic control at Old Cross but there had been little public discussion before this. The lack of consultation was a major issue following the installation of the measure and this point remains a contentious issue. The authority has claimed that it will cost £95,000 to change the arrangements at the junction, almost twice the cost of the installation, and some regard this is as a blackmail ploy by the authority to make their opponents think twice.

Hertford could have it's own local radio station by the year 2000. The town has been included in a list of towns for which The Radio Authority will be inviting tenders for radio stations at the beginning of 1999. A frequency between 106-107MHz will be advertised in January of next year, with bids closing in May.

The boom in eating out over the last ten or twenty years has led to a wide variety of outlets in the town and it has become something of a talking point that there are so many restaurants in the town.

This page last updated 7th July 1998