On behalf of South Oxhey residents I attended the latest South Oxhey Community Board meeting on February 12.

Before the meeting, members were invited to visit the marketing suite on Oxhey Drive for a tour. Firstly we were shown a scale model of the new South Oxhey. It was a brilliant display and the Countryside member Dan King explained details for the display and answered many questions.

We were then shown around the two-bedroom flat and it was very impressive.

The meeting was one with many questions from members to Countryside.

One main subject was that members considered that not enough space had been allowed for car parking especially as there would be many more visitors to our town and of course new property owners. Cllr Joan King expressed her annoyance that car spaces in Station Approach would be taken up by train travellers and would be full before shoppers began to move in.

The north side of the shopping centre then came in for considerable discussion. The shops along this side and those along Prestwick Road would be closed by the end of March. Nisa would move to the opposite side into much smaller premises. These closures brings back to the need for an additional bus service to take more shoppers to other towns.

Countryside issued a number of large posters headed Phase 2 Logistics. These posters will be enlarged and placed on the hoardings covering the shops on the north side of the shopping centre.

I discussed with Dan King of Countryside the need for certain shops to always be available in the main shopping area. There will be many shoppers that would not wish to cross the Prestwick Road to visit Station Approach. It is therefore vital that we always have shops that sell newspapers, confectionary and soft drinks.

Crossing the Prestwick Road is another of my main concerns. Eventually there will be many hundreds more shoppers some of whom will need to cross at the traffic lights.

I wrote to Herts County Council on January 15 asking them to meet up with me on site to discuss the problems.

A letter from the county council was then sent to me and included the following:

“The developer is not planning as you have found out, to improve the crossing at all. This is because their transport consultants looked at the number of people moving around now and in the future and concluded that there will be fewer pedestrians in the rush hours as there will be fewer shops.”

Roy H Telfer

Puttenham Close, South Oxhey