Why service road by Eastbourne vaccination centre is closed

Regarding car parking in the service road instead of the car park at the new Covid vaccination hub at Sovereign Community Centre:

I understand that for some people, the 90 metre walk from the car park can be challenging.

In an ideal world there would be no need for anyone to walk, but even if the service road was opened up, I’m not sure that problem would be solved and it could make the journey much more risky for people.

The reasons why the service road adjacent to the Centre is not open:

• The service road is narrow, making flow into and out of the road quite tricky. This is particularly true for the entrance to the road which is barrier controlled and has only one entrance and exit. This is likely to lead to significant congestion at that point and increase the risk of an accident.

• Parking is limited. There are only three designated disabled parking bays. If the road was opened up, in order to maintain flow in and out of the centre, there would only really be space to park on one side of the road. In reality it is likely that people would park on both sides of the road which could impede access both ways and make it more difficult to make three point turns to exit the centre.

• For those people who may have to park further away from the building due to the volume of parked cars, their journey to the centre would be just as long as from the current car park, but with a much greater risk as there is only one footpath on one side of the road and a far greater movement of traffic in a much more confined space.

• At the Sovereign Centre we also closed the service road outside the entrance for the same reasons. With so many people coming to attend appointments we need to ensure their route to the Centre is as free of potential hazards as possible. We also need to make sure we have unimpeded access for emergency vehicles to access the site. There is a very high risk that the service road would be severely congested, preventing easy access

• There are a number of school children who use this route home and we want to limit any increase in risk to them.

We do provide marshals who can assist people who need to use a wheelchair from the car park and back to it.