Introduction

Middle Street is a pedestrian heavy route through the town centre and we see hundreds, if not thousands of people use this area of the town centre on a daily basis. Widening the pavements will assist with people feeling much safer in this area.

Key changes

We’ve picked out five key changes to the area that you will see once work is completed:

• Widened footways – We will be widening the footways along Middle Street so that users of the town centre have more space to move safely without having to step into the road. This helps with social distancing in areas such as Middle Street where pavements are narrow.
• Raised seating planters, street trees and ornamental planting – We want to create a pleasant experience for shoppers to enjoy. Middle Street is one of the main shopping areas of the town centre and to assist with making the street more aesthetically appealing, we will be creating raised seating planters and introducing street trees and ornamental planting. Feedback during consultation on the public realm told us you wanted to see more greenery in the town centre, so we are introducing new street planting in a lot of the public realm areas. This will help to brighten the area up and also help with taking in CO2 and providing oxygen. Street planting also helps with land drainage and provides a habitat for wildlife.
• Flexible paving space – The pavement space that we do create in Middle Street will be able to help facilitate markets and other events. This is important to ensure that we adapt our high streets in the town centre to fit and suit the needs of users and visitors. We want to make Yeovil town centre a place where people can enjoy their shopping.
• Flexible layby area – With a Traffic Regulation Order in place which allows for Blue Badge Holder parking on one side of Middle Street and access only for deliveries, the flexible layby area also enables the street to be used for other occasional event uses such as food markets which we have recently seen take place in the town centre in late 2020.
• Improved street lighting and new bench seating – Improved street lighting in this public realm area will help with decreasing anti-social behaviour by ensuring it is well lit. New bench seating will allow town centre users to also take a break during shopping and enjoy the atmosphere or the town centre.