Batley businesses fear they will be ‘isolated’ from the rest of the town with planned road closure

As part of Kirklees Council’s £14.5m Batley Blueprint, the new designs for the town centre sees the Eastern side of Commercial Street closed to vehicles and traffic, to “ensure that people can enjoy walking safely through this heritage section.”

Members of the public had until last month to provide any feedback to the council, and business owners on Commercial Street have voiced their concerns over the proposals.

Sophie Tai, who runs Tanning Studio and the recently-opened clothes store Shelley & Co on the street, said:

“We rely on the passing trade and the footfall. We’ve seen that cars slow down and look in the window and they pull over and come in. We won’t get that anymore. This is our livelihood.

“If it was a full road closure throughout the whole town centre then maybe it would work in time and people would get used to it. But to isolate us from the town centre, it’s like they don’t want Eastern Commercial Street to be part of this new thing.”

She added: “We did some data collecting on how many cars actually pass and we worked out that about a million cars a year pass the shop. It’s going to affect a lot of people in the long run.

“We don’t want it to happen. It is going to be a town full of empty shops. We are almost certain that our clothes shop would go under. The tanning shop would maybe survive it.

“Last year it was all good with the new shop coming to Batley. This year we might lose it all.”

Nicola Rhodes, who has owned Nix Cakes and Coffee Shop for 12 years, is equally as frustrated and worries about customers having to carry large wedding cakes for a much longer distance.

“It’s going to be hard for people to come and collect stuff,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t trust myself walking out there with a cake. I’d struggle. I have elderly customers who come with walking sticks. How are they going to carry stuff? It just doesn’t make sense.

“I have no plans to go as it’s perfect for me, but if they close this road I’ll have to move for my customers. I don’t want to move as everybody helps each other out.”

Valerie Donohoe, who has been using the sunbeds on Commercial Street for 40 years, said:

“This will affect all of the shops because nobody will come to this end if they close this road off.

“It’s very upsetting.”

Imran Tai, Sophie’s husband who runs skincare treatments at Shelley & Co, wants Kirklees Council to “have a re-think”.

He said: “We are not against change, we are not against development. We want to make the town better, just don’t shut us off from the rest of the town.”

Coun Graham Turner, Cabinet Member for Finance and Regeneration, said:

“We recognise that a number of businesses located on the eastern side of Commercial Street have concerns regarding the proposed pedestrianisation of that end of the street, and we previously held a session with those most affected to discuss these concerns.

“As with all council consultations, we will review all feedback including past engagements and the most recent survey, this will be considered along with feedback from the businesses and the subsequent online petition before a report is published.

“No final decision has been reached. The engagement report will be published over the next month before a decision is made and we will communicate the outcome by summer before moving forward with the next steps.”

For more information, visit: https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-proposed-closure-of-eastern-commercial-street-in-batley?recruited_by_id=328d8750-1066-11f0-8f20-7d0c2ee79c7f&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink