Today I experienced the UK court system for the first time, as a prosecution witness in a relatively large Magistrates Court trial. Having read @BarristerSecret I was keen to see how my experience matched up. Here's what happened. (1/6) The trial was at a court 27 miles from where the witnesses and defendant live: 45 mins by car, over 90 by public transport. There are several closer courts but I guess they didn't have space. We were told to be there at 9am for a hopelessly optimistic 9.30 trial start. (2/6)

St. Peter's Square, Stockport [A PLACEMAKING THREAD] Stockport's largest pedestrian square had a makeover over a decade ago but never lived up to expectations. Instead of being packed, you'll be lucky to find more than 3 or 4 people there. Why? and what can we do about it? 1/ Back in the day the square sat at the western end of Stockport's busiest shopping area with the market at the other end (though normally quieter than this Royal visit). When Merseyway opened in the early '70s the shopping centre shifted and now runs along the river /2

Back in May Trafford introduced a pop-up cycle lane along the A56. Three months on and Stockport is doing a route too, going in next Monday, 31 August for 8 months. As far as I know there's been no consultation on the route, so today I cycled it. Here's what I found [THREAD] I'm a Stockport councillor but, despite asking for information weeks ago, the first I knew of the detail of the route was when it appeared on the council website yesterday. The council submitted 3 routes for Tranche 1 funding - only this one got it. 2/ stockport.gov.uk/current-propos…

I have pulled together my thoughts on the Planning for the Future white paper, which will radically change our planning system in England. I will acknowledge first that it has some positives, which are ably summarised here capx.co/these-profound… 1/ I have five concerns:
1. It cuts down the rules, proposing lightweight local plans.
It's easy to *say* that you can simplify the rules, harder to do it (see NPPF, bonfire of red tape etc.) In reality, you almost always just move the rules somewhere else, out of sight.

Romiley is a village near the Peak District, 8 miles from Manchester. In addition to the local shops, cafes and restaurants it has a theatre and a station. The main road through Romiley is a B-road. This thread is about enhancing the village centre. But why should you care? Well, Romiley is a good example of a very common road-improvement problem: best practices need wide roads to fit in space for pedestrians, bikes/micro-mobility and motor vehicles. But places like Romiley don’t have those wide roads. So what’s the best approach?

Having read Robert Jenrick on his "radical and necessary" planning system reforms, my thoughts are:
1. No sense that planning is always a trade-off. The more "automatic" you want approval to be, the less control local communities will have over it. telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/… 2. Creating good developments is hard. The best developments engage with local people at an early stage. Everything here suggests that engagement will be reduced. Planning permission can be "automatic" or you can give local people a real say in development. You can't do both.

This is a thread about putting the A6 between Stockport and Hazel Grove on a diet. This 5km section of the A6 is at least 4 lanes - 12 metres - wide. It's Hazel Grove's high street. It has schools, shops, a hospital, houses and a park. And traffic. Road diets are an American idea. You get all these 4-lane roads and it turns out they can be converted to 3 lanes and still carry just as many vehicles. How's that possible?

A short thread about demolishing Stockport's Merseyway shopping centre - something that pretty much everyone thinks would be great if it were possible, and inspired by this neat imagining from @GroundworkGM. Here's why Stockport covered up its river and what we can do about it.

https://twitter.com/GroundworkGM/status/1284088169818882048

Before the Merseyway Shopping Centre was build, Stockport had constructed a nice big road over the Mersey. Why? At the time (1930s) the Mersey was heavily polluted and ran down the backs of factories and warehouses. The road was widely seen as an improvement.

Today I’m talking about play streets and what we can learn from implied play streets, ahead of Monday’s Webinar with @playingout. Can we have 24x7 play streets? Can they really be safe? [THREAD 1/14] I believe that many residential streets could and should be designated as permanent play streets where children can play in the road and pedestrians have priority over cyclists who have priority over motor vehicles. All the time. [2/14]

Cycling on Manchester's Princess Road [THREAD].

Putting in decent cycling infrastructure on a main road can be a big challenge. Princess Road (the A5103, going through Whalley Range and Moss Side down M60 J5) is already 80% there. Coming from the South, there's already a safe route that takes you under the motorway junction