'Awful' Southsea street set to get planters and trees in Portsmouth trial 'greening scheme'

Fawcett Road in Southsea will be included in Portsmouth City Council's greening project trial in a bid to boost footfall as well as air quality.

Proposals include putting in planters and trees, replacing old bins and installing bicycle hangars in the street, which safely store bikes undercover.

Deputy council leader, Councillor Steve Pitt, said: 'We want sustainability. It’s about making the area feel more loved.

'We want to get local businesses to adopt the planters so they can be maintained and looked after by them.

'Instead of having a bollard somewhere, can we put a tree there? It will achieve the same thing. That’s the mentality we’re using.

'So many people arrive at Fratton and walk through Fawcett Road for events in the summer like Victorious festival and it looks awful. That is our gateway into Southsea so it should look good.'

Elements of the project will depend on public feedback.

Cllr Pitt added: 'We also want to put in a cycle hanger, opposite the Fawcett Inn. We’ll do it with the community so we’ll send letters out to everyone to ask if they would like use it as your on-street cycle parking.

'We’ll then monitor that to see if its popular and if it is we’ll leave it, if not we’ll move it somewhere else, so it gets the most use.'

Rachel Hudson, co-ordinator of Friends of the Earth Portsmouth, said the group were 'very supportive' of the scheme

'It's important that it's not just about planting more trees but about encouraging more people to walk and cycle,' she said.

'We would like to see this taken a step further and use Fawcett Road as a trial where the road is closed maybe for a couple of hours once a week to cars to make it a safer, cleaner environment for everyone.'

As part of its city-wide greening strategy the council is planning to plant 30,000 extra trees by 2030.

Funding for Fawcett Road has already been agreed as part of the council’s sustainable transport budget.

The scheme has been put on hold amid the coronavirus outbreak.

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