OKEHAMPTON Town and Hamlets Neighbourhood Planning Group is urging residents of Okehampton and its surrounding hamlets to share their thoughts on the town’s traffic and infrastructure issues.

In recent weeks people living in Okehampton, including local business owners, have regarded the town’s infrastructure as its biggest problem.

With Christmas around the corner and the impact of the Polar Express event, Okehampton congestion has increased over the past few weeks due to more visitors to the town.

Residents have said that problematic issues include the pedestrian crossing in Market Street, which causes traffic to back up in School Way as it works out of conjunction with the main traffic lights on the Fore Street junction.

Also, the road linking Waitrose to the main set of traffic lights has a pelican crossing out of sync with the main lights, which is said to slow down traffic even further during busy periods.

The Okehampton Town and Hamlets Neighbourhood Planning Group has requested to hear your thoughts on the current traffic issues in order to include your ideas in the neighbourhood plan.

You can contact the community group directly by writing to them via the Facebook page ‘Okehampton Town and Hamlets Neighbourhood Planning’.

With your thoughts and input, the group intends to come up with an action plan to help tackle the increasing traffic issues in Okehampton and its surrounding hamlets.

In the New Year the group has plans to get feedback on traffic and infrastructure by hosting a series of focus groups.

Within these focus groups, members of the neighbourhood planning group will take on board your thoughts and suggestions — innovative, novel and unusual ideas will be welcome.

A spokesperson from Okehampton Town and Hamlets Neighbourhood Planning said: ‘We are interested in your ideas to solve our current problems and plan for a better situation in the next ten years. We can develop these ideas and put these in our neighbourhood plan.‘

‘Facebook us with your ideas for now and soon we will providing details of some focus groups in the new year. Keep an eye on our page for more opportunities to suggest what we can do to improve our town and hamlets.’

The issue of traffic was also discussed at a Okehampton and District Chamber of Trade meeting earlier this year. Local business owners were in agreement that the traffic in the town caused huge problems and was an urgent issue that needed to be addressed. The chamber has written multiple letters Devon County Council on the issue.