Latest news with #ReadingBoroughCouncil
BBC News
4 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
Town centre offices in Reading to be converted into flats
Three floors of town centre offices will be converted into apartments after a planning application was first, second and third floors of St Mary's House in St Mary's Butts, Reading, will be converted to create 31 serviced floor will be built on top of the current building to provide another six apartments but shop units, currently including a Cancer Research charity shop and Caffè Nero, will Borough Council gave the plans permission last week. You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
BBC News
14-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
Jane Austen plaque installed at former school in Reading
A plaque commemorating Jane Austen has been installed at her former school 250 years on from her Pride and Prejudice author, who was born in Steventon, Hampshire, spent 18 months being educated at the Reading Ladies Boarding School in the Reading Abbey Gateway in mark the anniversary, the former schoolroom at the medieval Abbey Gateway has opened open for a series of special events and new plaque installed at the site will be officially unveiled by Reading's mayor, Alice Mpofu-Coles, later this month. Austen arrived at boarding school in Reading aged nine, and was educated there alongside her sister Cassandra until December little is known about Jane's time in Reading, the schoolroom at Abbey Gateway is regularly cited as the inspiration for Mrs Goddard's School in Austen's novel Emma. Adele Barnett-Ward, Reading Borough Council's culture chief, said: "Jane Austen's legacy continues to inspire readers and writers around the world, and we are proud to honour her connection to Reading with this new commemorative plaque."The Abbey Gateway, where she once studied, is a treasured part of our town's heritage, and we are proud to celebrate that rich history with residents and visitors alike."The new commemorative plaque replaces a brass one installed in a small locked garden behind the Abbey Gateway in 2006. Reading Museum, which now runs the site, is running tours on most Saturdays until tours are part of events being held across the south of England to mark a quarter of a millennium since the author's week it was announced that the house in Winchester where the author spent the final weeks of her life would open to the public for the first time. You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
BBC News
13-06-2025
- Automotive
- BBC News
Northcourt Avenue in Reading to get speed humps and 20mph limit
A residential road where drivers have been accused of "playing chicken with kids" and speeding at 70mph is set to get a 20mph limit and speed requested traffic calming measures on Northcourt Avenue in Reading, a long road that is home to properties, a doctors surgery and two of the change claimed drivers reached speeds well over the current 30mph some objections, Reading Borough Council unanimously agreed to approve the measures at the meeting on Wednesday. In total, 17 speed humps are going to be put in - 15 on the road itself, and two on Wellington will also be speed tables put at the entrances to Northcourt Avenue at Christchurch Road and Cressingham Road.A consultation into the measures received 32 responses - 25 in support and six neighbour wrote: "Traffic on the road is currently dangerous and the speed limit is often ignored with speeds up to 60-70 mph." According to Crashmap UK, there has been one serious and three slight accidents along Northcourt Avenue between 2019 and Andrew Hornsby-Smith, who represents the area, said the plans had received "overwhelming support".He said objections from neighbours who called for either no humps or fewer of them were "ignoring the reality of the accidents, or simply just playing chicken with kids on this relatively straight road"."The spacing of 75m between humps is the most efficient way of slowing cars down without them slowing down and speeding up, creating problems in that way," he £200,000 worth of changes, funded from the community infrastructure levy, will be installed in the summer or winter of this year. You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
BBC News
12-06-2025
- Automotive
- BBC News
The drive to net zero picks up speed in Reading
The more pollution your car pumps out, the more we will make you pay to park - that is the message from Reading Borough using cars with the highest carbon dioxide emissions could see their parking charges more than double under the plans. The sliding scale of tariffs would apply to parking permits and on-street meters, but not yet to car parks.A smaller Ford Focus might cost £1.20 to park for an hour, while a BMW X7 diesel could be charged £3.40, according to the tariff now, it is just a plan, but Reading council is preparing to take the next step towards making this a reality for thousands of drivers by seeing what people think of it. It is by no means the first English town or city to want to go down this introduced its own emissions-based car parking scheme back in 2022, with higher polluting vehicles charged slightly more to encourage a shift to cleaner, more sustainable travel. 'Radical move' Reading councillors already know it would be deeply unpopular with some - 70% of residents who took part in a small-scale informal survey in March said they either disagreed or strongly disagreed they should pay more for a parking permit if their cars were more acknowledging the issue, John Ennis, the councillor in charge of the borough's transport network, said 30% of people who live in Reading did not have a car anyway, adding: "It's a radical move from a radical council who are serious about protecting the environment and getting to net zero by 2030, while also cleaning our air."He also said it was important to get the scale of any permit price rises into perspective, saying the owner of a Mini Cooper would have to pay 22p more per week while the owner of a two-litre Land Rover Discovery would see a 55p rise."You can get a Mars bar with that somewhere in Reading," he added. While it has been some time since you could buy a Mars bar for 55p, Mr Ennis said the financial hit some will take under this plan was unavoidable if the council is to meet its pledge to be net zero by 2030. A public consultation on the idea will run from 26 June to 15 the scheme goes ahead, motorists could see the new charges from late autumn.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Town gets 96 new parking machines
New parking payment machines are being installed in Reading after the old ones were taken out of service in April. The borough council has begun the process of replacing the old pay and display machines - which allowed drivers to pay over the phone or using the RingGo app - with 96 new ones. They will allow contactless payments by bank cards, mobile payments via apps, and about 20 of them will take cash payments. Lead councillor for transport John Ennis said the new machines would offer "a much more convenient service" for motorists. He said he recognised cash payment remained popular in some places, which the council said included the area around the Royal Berkshire Hospital. "Machines will still accept cash in these locations," he said. The old machines were bagged up in April. Of the 96 machines, 82 will be used for on-street parking, with the remainder being installed in off-street car parks. The council's review of its on-street parking service found that 55% of transactions were made using the RingGo app. RingGo's call service allows people to pay for parking without needing a smartphone. The installation of the machines clears the way for emissions-based parking charges to be introduced, which were discussed by the council's traffic management sub-committee on Wednesday. You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram. Parking machines covered amid move to cashless Reading Borough Council
